


what we do in the shadows

by lostariels



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Violence, Character Death, Domestic Violence, F/F, Heavy Angst, Imprisonment, Injury, Orphans, Prison, Soviet Union, Torture, War, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2020-08-20 12:09:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 58,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20227624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostariels/pseuds/lostariels
Summary: When two young immigrant girls find themselves orphaned, they become unlikely friends on a cross-country train trip to find new families, before they're torn apart at opposite coasts of the United States and left wondering about the fate of each other.Kieran, a young Irish girl, finds herself in Metropolis, the replacement daughter for a wealthy family, taking on the name of their dead daughter. Her new mother's cold, her father's never home, and her new brother dotes on her. In her new life of high society, a far cry from the orphanage she spent four years at, she's expected to be a respectable lady.Karina, a newly emigrated girl with little English, picked up off the streets of National City, finds herself in Midvale, living on a farm owned by a doctor and her husband. At odds with the new girl she has to call her sister, Karina turns to music and shuns her chores, mourning the fresh loss of her parents in Soviet Russia.Never forgetting each other, they meet again in the most unlikely way, on the cusp of World War II breaking out. Determined to change the fate chosen for them all those years ago, they find themselves enlisting as spies, a journey which takes them down two very different paths.





	1. Chapter 1

She slept on the narrow cot in the small, windowless room, burrowed up against her mother’s warmth, wrapped up in such impenetrable darkness that the little girl sometimes wondered if she was blind, although she didn’t quite understand the concept of it. No more than four years old, the only thing she understood was that she was there with her mother, and she liked it when her mother sang to her, soft and lilting as she cradled her in her lap and stroked her dark hair while they slowly starved.

They were both painfully thin - more so the woman, who did everything she could to make sure her daughter was fed. Food was scarce to come by in those days, with little more than rubbery potatoes in a watery broth, whenever the feverish woman could be bothered to cook that was. Sometimes they had to make do with chewing on raw potatoes, the little girl crying as she tried to refuse it, but too hungry to do anything but give in to the starchy cold lumps that her mother tried to feed her as she murmured softly.

_ “Kieran, come on, my love.” _

Her mother was her only source of comfort in the dark, starving world. It had been like that for as long as the little girl could remember, for the most part. There had been a reprieve that had seemed endless to the child but had been no more than a few weeks at sea, and it hadn’t been much better.

It had been four months since they’d left their home on the east coast of Ireland. They lived in a tiny room in an unheated house made of stone in a small village called Ashford in County Wicklow. Her mother had held and lost a string of jobs, none of which were enough to support her and her bastard born daughter. There had been nine of them in all living in the house, all of them crammed into two bedrooms, sharing mattresses for warmth in the bitter weather. 

Food had been scarce there too, and people all around them were fleeing to America. There were tales of fields of grain, big houses with indoor plumbing and electricity, jobs for anyone and everyone that made it through Shelley Island. It was like a dream, and for months, they lived off dreams of hamburgers and coffee while their stomachs were hollowed out and her mother scraped and saved to buy them passage to the States.

On a warm spring day, they boarded the _ RMS Baltic _ at Queenstown in the south of Ireland, bound for Shelley Island. It was the primary port of emigration on the western coast, used to process the masses Irish immigrants seeking a better life in the New World. Her mother had heard they’d have better luck there. The trip was longer that way, taking them north, around Canada and back down, and riskier, but with an influx of ships heading towards the east coast, it was likely that they’d be processed quicker. 

They had the clothes on their backs, their documents, a scrap of paper with a name scrawled onto tucked into her mother’s pocket, and not a penny to their name, but with the hope of better things to come, they boarded the ship. There was a woman who had emigrated years earlier who, according to local gossip in Ashford, worked at a respectable dining establishment in National City, where the sun shone every day and the streets were clean, and Kieran’s mother was intent on tracking her down with the information on that paper.

Despite having lived their lives in a seaside village, a cluster of homes nestled in between green hills and a strip of sandy shore that gave way to choppy water, neither of them had ever been on a boat before. Being in the middle of the ocean, tucked away in their cramped rooms in steerage, shared with other passengers, they were both ill for much of the voyage. It had been hard on the little girl, who cried and clung to her mother, who was grey and sagging with weariness as bout after bout of seasickness slammed into her. 

The air was foul and close, the food thin slop that they couldn’t keep down anyway, and the only reprieve from the darkness of their shared cabin was their forays out onto the lower deck to watch the churning, oily water below the _ RMS Baltic _.

The morning they arrived in National City harbour was so smoggy and overcast that they stood at the railing, Kieran perched on her mother’s hip, and squinted at the smear of grey as the muggy air made their clothes cling to their skin with sweat. They could barely make out the tall tower of Shelley Island, a short distance from the docks.

Other steamships clustered in the harbour, and they manoeuvred their way through murky waters of the dirty bay before they docked. Herded into long lines to be inspected, interrogated, stamped, they were set loose amongst the other immigrants, a cacophony of accents and languages mingling in an incomprehensible washing over them as Kieran clung to her mother, head buried into the crook of her shoulder as her mother tenderly stroked her dark hair.

The smell of too many sweaty, unwashed bodies mingled unpleasantly with the sulphurous smell of the briny sea, and as they queued for the ferry to the mainland of National City, they didn’t catch a single glimpse of waving fields of grain or the elusive sun. It was hot, they could be sure of that, and hunger gnawed at their stomachs after weeks unable to keep anything down.

Her mother set her down as they took their first steps onto the streets of National City, holding tightly to her daughter’s hand as she peered down at the piece of paper with _ Maeve Kinnear, The Irish Rose, Delancey Street _ written on it in her crabbed handwriting held in her other hand. They lost their way several times, her mother asking strangers for directions in her thick Irish brogue as she towed the child along with her. More often than not, they turned away without answering, brushing off the immigrants with a look of disdain, taking in the soiled clothes and gaunt looks before walking off.

Eventually, they found the place. An Irish pub, as disreputable and rough as the ones in the backstreets of Dublin. Steam rose from the streets in the humid air, and they stood outside for a moment in their sweat-stiffened clothes, covered in grime and itching from the lice that were rampant on the steamship, and her mother collected herself. And they went inside.

It was a sorry excuse for an Irish pub. The floor was grimy, dim sunlight filtered in through the one window that hadn’t been boarded over, and a barkeeper wiped a dusty glass with a soiled rag. A woman was placing plates down in front of a rowdy gang of men, all of them tattooed and coarse. The woman was the same one that her mother had scrawled down on her piece of paper.

Maeve Kinnear had received a letter and had been expecting them. Kieran’s mother was hired as a dishwasher and led through the narrow streets, teeming with people and shadowed by the tall brick buildings that filled the neighbourhoods. The woman knew of an apartment for rent for ten dollars a month, on the third floor of a five-story tenement run by a Polish landlord. She left mother and child at the door and they were taken upstairs, struggling in the heat and the dark while the heavily accented man lectured the woman on the rules.

“I have no trouble with the Irish, as long as you stay out of trouble,” he said as he opened the door, a gauging look on his face as he sized the young mother up.

It became apparent in that one expression that the moment she opened her mouth, she would be judged. Suddenly, it didn’t so much as feel like the New World, but a different one. Completely unfamiliar and similarly unwelcoming. Yet they were there, in America, in their new apartment, which was like a railroad of rooms, one connecting to the next, which connected to the next. The front parlour had two windows overlooking the street, then the kitchen and a small bedroom with a window that looked out to the wall of another building.

He pulled a chain from the pressed-metal kitchen ceiling and dim light radiated from a single naked bulb, illuminating a scarred wooden table, a small stained sink, which it turned out only ran cold and a gas stove. In the hallway was a shared lavatory, shared with their neighbours, a childless German couple. The landlord left them alone after that.

The Poles disapproval went over Kieran’s head, but the sweltering heat, strange noises and dimness of the apartment were foreign and unnerving as her mother led her inside. To her, they weren’t a fresh start, just scary and unfamiliar. There, the damp didn’t sink into their bones, they weren’t crammed in a tiny cottage with seven other people while her mother left her at home to go out late at night with local men that came calling. Here, her mother had a promise of a more reputable job, they had running water and wan light to illuminate the shoddy apartment by the pull of a chain. They had a toilet and a bathtub _ inside _ the building.

It was fine, for a while. Her mother scrubbed dishes in the pub, leaving Kieran at home with the German couple who doted on her and gave her sweets, speaking to her in their rough, native language. They huddled up on their narrow cot at night, sticky with sweat but content with their new life. Kieran was young - there wasn’t much for her to forget anyway. Soon, the only thing she remembered about Ireland was the grey sea and the green countryside. National City had none of that.

But then her mother lost her job and they couldn’t afford the rent. Too many immigrants from Eastern Europe - Irish, English, Italians and Germans - flocked to the States, filling the streets with their broken English or unamerican accents, all of them desperate for employment and places to live. It had been that way for years now, and the locals were less than pleased about it. Many doors shut in her mother’s face at the Irish brogue that came out of her mouth as she begged for work.

Their meagre clothes became threadbare, their skin was stretched over their bones, and every scrap she could afford went to feeding her daughter. But even that wasn’t enough. And with starvation came a raging fever that ripped through the young girl’s mother, a dry, hacking cough that rattled in her chest as her cheeks became darkly spotted, her muscles aching so badly that she couldn’t even bring herself to get out of bed. Too young to be of any help, Kieran curled up beside her mother, listening to her shallow breaths as heat radiated off her like a furnace.

She didn’t even know to ask for help. Nobody knocked on their door, nobody came to check up on them. Her mother hadn’t moved for two days before the landlord came knocking for rent, forcing his way inside to find the little girl curled up beside her mother’s dead body, her forehead feverish to the touch.

Three days later, Kieran woke on a narrow cot in a hospital ward. It was the tail end of the Spanish Flu that had taken her mother, a few months shy of when the pandemic would taper out, and she came to feverish and painfully thin, hollow cheeks flushed red and her cracked lips moving wordlessly. The sound she could bring herself to make through her sore through was the cry for her mother.

Instead, she got the German couple, both greying with pitiful eyes. They were the only people she knew in America, and even they didn’t stay. Their solution was to take her to the Children’s Aid Society. It was a place staffed by social workers who fed and cared for the children, giving them somewhere warm to sleep. It was a mercy that they took her from the hospital of the sick and dying, although she didn’t know it.

She was dressed in second-hand clothes scrounged up at the hospital, and the kindly German woman clasped a necklace around her neck, a sad smile on her face as Kieran reached up to touch it. It was her mother’s pewter Claddagh Celtic cross. Too cheap to even be worth selling, but the only thing she had left of her mother, of her family in Ireland. She didn’t even know her own family, truth be told, but she clutched it tightly in a small fist and cried for her mother the whole way to the orphanage. 

The German couple dropped her off with regretful looks in their eyes, while the little girl cried for them too as they left her with an older matron, thin with a white bonnet. She didn’t want to be left there alone. She didn’t know any of the people there, and their soothing words were incomprehensible to her, so different from the lilting Irish and rough German that had been her two mediums for socialising. 

Yet she was stuck there. The matrons all tittered over her name, so masculine and Irish and not at all acceptable for a little girl in the New World, and she was scrubbed with a coarse brush until her skin turned pink and her hair had been rid of itchy lice. Dressed in donated clothes, amounting to a dress that was two sizes too big, a white pinafore and thick stockings, uncomfortably hot in the mid-spring heat of National City, she was given a bed at the orphanage and that was that. 

There was no fuss over her loss, no comfort for her grief, and Kieran was left to mourn alone, crying through the night, much to the irritation of the other girls of varying ages that slept in the long room with her. It became evident that the quickest relief would come in forgetting. Her life before she’d been ushered through the doors of the old bricked building had ceased to exist. Now, there was only forward, and a new family, if she was lucky. 

But she soon turned five and the brusque matrons taught her to read via their sermons of the bible, and she watched as kids came and went and nobody came for her. She’d help some hope in her tiny heart that her father, a man she’d never met, would turn up and whisk her back home to Ireland, the fading memories of dreary weather and bodies crammed into the darkness a welcome familiarity compared to the harshness of the orphanage.

She was young, which meant she had a good chance of being adopted, yet nobody came for them. Too many orphans filled the city, clogging the streets with their begging, sleeping in doorways and on stoops. Nobody was looking to adopt another one. So she was left there, with two dozen other kids, some younger but most older, left to be fed lump oats that slowly filled her out as starvation became a distant memory of another child.

They didn’t have the power to change her name, so they just called her girl, sniffing with disdain as they made it clear what they thought of Kieran. But they let her keep the Irish cross when all other possessions were taken from them, and she would curl up on her lumpy mattress at night and recall the sound of her mother’s voice gently singing to her. Her face had become a hazy memory by the time she turned six, but the sound of her voice haunted her at night.

And before she knew it, Kieran was eight. Not exactly tall for her age, but not quite scrawny either. She had fierce green eyes that glowered from beneath heavy brows, and her knees were always scabbed from being pushed over in the concrete yard outside where the other children played together. Not her. She didn’t join in on the girls’ skipping games, and she scuffed her donated shoes whenever she tried to kick the boy’s leather ball, earning herself a rap across the knuckles with a willow switch until she decided it wasn’t worth it. She isolated herself, sullen and pale and full of loneliness. 

Kieran was just shy of nine before she left that place. With a group of twenty other children, she stood scrubbed and wearing her donated clothes, her dress falling to her knees with a starched pinafore over the top. Her dark hair was tied back with a black ribbon and her new shoes were polished and her thick socks covered the grazed knees from her stubborn roughhousing in the yard as she was shunned by the other children.

It was October, the sky deep blue and cloudless and the sun scorching and unrelenting as it beat down on the crowded city. She could recall bitter cold that made her joints stiff and her teeth chatter so hard she’d bite her trembling lip hard enough to draw blood, but the sweltering heat that made them all hot beneath the collar, sweating and pink-cheeked as a stink hung over the city, was just as unwelcome in its own way.

“You- the Irish girl. Come here,” one of the matrons called out to her, beckoning impatiently as she pursed her lips with distaste. 

They still rarely called her by her name. They didn’t know her mother had prayed for a boy, had been so sure that it was as her stomach swelled and ballooned out, stroking the taut skin as she murmured the name she’d chosen for him. _ Kieran. _ Only for her to give birth to a screaming girl, small and pink-cheeked with the same green eyes and crop of dark hair. Her mother had named her Kieran anyway, in the hope that some of the courage and hardiness of a son would rub off on her. She would never grow to work in a factory or a field like the other boys, but perhaps the world would be kinder to her for it.

But the matrons didn’t know or care, so they called her girl, and they scolded her for her pronunciation of words until she rarely spoke and the edges of her accent had been smoothed. She was quiet, but she watched and listened, drinking everything in and learning. And she learned quickly, whether it was to eat slowly to trick herself into thinking she was fuller, or her letters and numbers, from hours, spent poring over the heavy leatherbound Bible the old matrons preached from. Raised amongst English and Gaelic, and the German her old neighbours had spoken to her, she had an ear for languages, picking up a smattering of Italian from the deeply tanned boys from Tuscany, Czech from the young girl from Prague who cried herself to sleep each night, and French from an older boy, who left after a few weeks, taking his chances on the streets as a shoeshiner rather than staying at the crowded orphanage.

As Kieran made her way towards the thin matron, a plump woman stepped up beside her and they both loomed over her with stern looks on their faces. The thin woman reached down and jerked her head up by her chin, forcing Kieran to look up at them with her defiant green eyes.

“Unfortunate,” the second matron said, clucking her tongue. “It’s hard enough to get placed out when they’re older. Nobody wants an Irish one; too many of them around these days.”

The first tucked a loose lock of hair behind the girl’s ear. “Don’t want to scare them aware now, do you? You must keep your hair out of your face, and _ don’t scowl _. If you’re neat and well mannered, someone might just take you.”

Fixing the unevenly buttoned cuff of Kieran’s dress, the second woman knelt in front of her to retie the laces on her black shoes, before giving her a gentle smile. “There we are. Much better. You want to look like the kind of girl a woman would want around the house. You need to make sure you’re well-spoken, okay? Enunciate properly. They might be able to stamp the rest of that accent out. Now, what do we have here?”

“It’s my Irish cross.”

“No keepsakes on the train.”

Reaching up to touch it, tracing the pattern with the tip of her finger, she gave them an anxious look. She’d had it for nearly as long as she could remember. It was the only thing left that tied her to Ireland, to her mother, and she clutched it in her pale hand, afraid that they would take it from her.

“It was my mother’s.”

The two matrons glanced at each other, hesitating. The bony woman knew Kieran had it - she’d been here when she’d been brought in - but they were to take only the belongings donated to them through the Children’s Aid Society with them. The pewter Claddagh cross wasn’t part of that.

“It’s the only thing I have left of her. Of Ireland.”

It was true, but she said it out of desperation, hoping it would sway them. And it did, because the second matron nodded, before glancing back at her, smiling softly as she fixed Kieran’s collar and climbed back to her feet.

They were taken then, all twenty of the children, through the crowded city, each of them clutching a small brown suitcase. It was hot and more than one child misbehaved and earned themselves a cuff around the ear before they made it to the station. They heard the train before they saw it, the low hum and rumble that could be felt underfoot, the piercing whistle which grew louder as the train approached the platform. A black engine raced towards them, looming tall and long, casting a shadow over the platform as it let out a hiss of steam and came to a grating halt on the tracks.

It was unseasonably warm that day, and Kieran watched as more than one boy tugged at the thick wool suit coats they wore. Her hair was damp against her neck, her pinafore stiff and uncomfortable, and the handle of her suitcase slick in her clammy palm. It contained the rest of her worldly possessions that she wasn’t currently wearing, all newly acquired. An old bible, two sets of clothes, a hat, a black coat that fell past her hands, and a spare pair of shoes.

Her name was stitched inside her coat. _ Kieran. _ No surname - the old German couple whose name she couldn’t remember hadn’t known it, and she’d been so young that it had eluded her memory. Yet it was her name, and for all her disapproval as she tutted over the task, the old lady that had stitched it onto her coat had sewed it as it was. It was a common enough name in County Wicklow, and not so unusual in the Irish tenements of National City - if you happened to be a young boy - but it wouldn’t be acceptable anywhere the train was likely to take the young girl.

“I hope you aren’t attached to that name, girl, because I can promise you if you’re lucky enough to be chosen, your new parents will change it in a heartbeat. You’re just lucky you don’t have red hair; there’d be no luck changing that,” one of the matrons had said to her that morning as they’d prepared her for her trip.

And she _ wasn’t _ so attached to the name. Sometimes, Kieran was as likely to think Girl was her name as her actual name, seeing as she answered to it more often. Nobody cared that it was a popular Irish name, nobody cared that it was one of the last times to her homeland, or that her mother had given it to her and her mother was dead now. They didn’t care about the past, they were just trying to place as many children as possible into new homes, leaving it up to the new parents to do the rest of the work. 

On the platform, clouds of white steam billowing around them as the smell of sewers and too many bodies packed together mingled in the heat, they were ordered into a line by a man with a moustache, from tallest to shortest, which set Lena somewhere in the middle range. Some of the older kids held babies in their arms, juggling the heavy weight of squirming toddlers as they kept a tight grip on their suitcases.

Before she managed to get onto the train, a dark-haired baby was shoved into her arms too, barely older than six months, with a crop of jet black hair and piercing blue eyes. The baby burbled in her arms, clutching at her pinafore and the ends of her long hair. His name was Kal, and Kieran made the safe assumption that he’d be answering to something else before too long. Nearly weightless in her arms, she managed to gingerly cradle him in the crook of her elbow, apprehensive and nervous, having never been around many children before. 

Still, she safely made it onboard when she reached the front of the line, climbing onto the train to find wooden seats all facing forward, separated by a narrow aisle. Over half of the seats were occupied already, and she made for two seats in a row of three, where a blonde girl a few years older than her sat, eyes red from crying, and Kieran slid her suitcase onto the overhead rack and sat down on the seat closest to the aisle, leaving a space between her and the other girl.

A woman stood at the front of the train car, gripping the backs of the seats either side of the aisle as her gaze swept over all of the children with a cold, clinical detachment to her stare. “They call this an orphan train, children, and you’re very lucky to be on it. Today, you’re leaving behind an evil city, full of poverty and ignorance, for a better life. While you are on this train, you will follow some simple rules; you will listen to instructions and cooperate accordingly, you will respect your chaperones, you will encourage your seatmates to behave appropriately, and when you are allowed off the train, you will stay within the area we designate. If you find yourself unable to adhere to these simple rules, you’ll be sent straight back to where you came from and turned out onto the streets to fend for yourself.”

The younger children shifted impatiently, the speech going over their head as they craned their necks to stare out at the platform, squirmed in their seats and made small sounds of complaint. The ones over the age of six had already heard a similar version at the orphanage before they’d left. Kieran paid little attention to the spiel as her stomach quietly rumbled and she thought about breakfast that morning. All she’d been given was a dry piece of bread and a tin cup of milk, but that had been hours ago, and it seemed like the squirming baby was hungry too. Kieran knew better than to ask when more food would be coming though.

Children sat in twos and threes, looking around with doleful eyes. Nobody knew where they were going, and the fear and anxiety was thick in the air, almost palpable as they all shifted, muffling coughs and sniffing, while whispers ran up and down the train car. Only the youngest were oblivious to the thick tension hanging over the mass of assembled children. 

They’d been told little about where the train was taking them, only that it was to a better place. A land where the trees were laden with rosy apples and cattle roamed freely in pastures that stretched as far as the eye could see. There were good families waiting to take them in, to give each of them a home - if they were lucky. Kieran had vague memories of a place like that - not the abundance of food, but the cattle - and she was looking forward to seeing cows and sheep grazing in the fields. She couldn’t remember seeing anything other than mangy dogs and cooing pigeons in National City, surrounded by the arid desert and hazy foothills of dusty rock. But she was sceptical too. After so many years in an orphanage, alone and told that someone will come for her - soon, she just had to be patient - the promise of some paradise was too good to be true.

The strange woman that had joined them on the train took Kal from her when he started fussing and it became clear that she didn’t know what to do, and Kieran watched her carry him down the aisle, to the back of the car, where she bustled about. He would never know his parents. Never know where he came from - his name was not an American one, that much she knew - and not so much as a ghostly memory of his mother to cling to at night. He would be snatched up quickly by a couple desperate for a baby, starting his life anew with the only family he’d ever know.

It was different for her. Kieran lay somewhere in the middle. She remembered her mother, although she could no longer recall her face. Her soft voice whispering Gaelic lullabies, her dry hands, cracked and red from washing dishes in scalding water, the dark cottage with a crumbling wall enclosing a narrow garden, the bitter cold and rubbery potatoes. The misery and foul sickness that filled the dark tenement she’d briefly occupied in National City. They were all vague recollections of another life, but she clung to the snatches of them whenever they visited, holding them close as if she was afraid she’d forget who she was.

The baby was soon deposited back in her arms, and the man started handing out lunch pails of bread and cheese and fruit, and tin cups of milk. Each of them was given a blanket, and if they raised their hands, were allowed to come forward to drink out of a bucket of water with a dipper. There was an indoor toilet, which they quickly learned was nothing more than an open hole above the tracks. At least it was one less foul order in the packed carriage, the windows fogging up from the heat generated from so many bodies. 

Kieran ate her food quietly, dipping bread in milk until it was soggy enough for the baby in her lap, with his dark head in the crook of her arm, before she wrapped the scratchy blanket around them both. The rhythmic chugging of the steam train and the shifting sounds of people eating in silence was surprisingly soothing, and she was left alone, listening to the wheels clacking in their grooves as the train rattled along with the hours.

Dusk descended outside the windows, blurring the sharp points of trees as the sky darkened to deep indigo, and then black, a crescent moon adding its wan light to the evening. She slipped in and out of consciousness, dozing lightly as her body swayed with the movement of the train and the other girl slept soundly. She hadn’t said a word yet, looking pale and frightened as she huddled as far up against the window as she could, blanket wrapped tightly around herself and lip quivering. Wherever she was going, she was afraid of it.

When she fully woke again, hours later, there was a smudge of blue on the horizon, quickly lightning to the soft pastels of dawn, tangerine and salmon and warm sunlight seeping in through the wide carriage window. The train car was quiet and Kal was still asleep in her arms, the rhythmic motion of the train lulling her into a trance as she watched the landscape trundle past.

As daybreak came, they passed the time staring out the windows, talking and playing games. The woman had a set of checkers and a bible. Kieran thumbed through her own little one, reading psalms that had been read to her over and over again by matrons at the orphanage. She wagered she was one of the few children on the train who could read, and only by luck of being stuck at the orphanage long enough to have learnt from sermons and some of the older children. She knew all her letters too, although rarely had a need for it. 

Their first stop was at a depot for sandwich fixings, and the tall man with the moustache climbed off the train. No one else was allowed. Peering through the window, the blue-eyed baby alert in her lap, Kieran took in the sight of the man in his white wingtips, talking to farmers on the platform. She could see a basket of red apples, a sack of bread and one of them unwrapping a block of yellow cheese. Her stomach rumbled with hunger from the meagre meal they’d been given yesterday, although she couldn’t complain; she knew what it was really like to starve.

Trapped in the train car, the children became restless. Especially a group of boys, stirring up trouble in small ways, however they could. They were like a pack of wild dogs, and Kieran had seen the likes of them before, coming and going from the orphanage with frequency. They were lawless orphans who travelled in gangs, surviving on the streets as pickpockets or shoe shiners, or worse. To diffuse the restless tension, they were all made to stand up in groups, instructed to shake out their stiff muscles.

A scuffle broke out when the train left the station again, earning a few of them a boxing around their ears and a scolding off the man, who had no qualms about telling them how little they were worth. Even threats to turn them out of the carriage at the next station weren’t enough to deter them from small acts of annoyance, much to the ire of the adults. Most of the boys had come in off the streets; the threat of putting them back there didn’t have the desired effect.

Kal started fussing at the nuisance of a few of the rowdier boys at the back as they were given a stern lecture about Christian values off the woman after terrifying some of the other children into thinking they were being sold at an auction. Gingerly holding the baby up, Kieran stared helplessly at the woman, desperate for her attention, as she tried to soothe him to no avail.

“He will not like,” the girl sitting beside her said.

Jumping slightly at the fact that it was the first words she’d spoken thus far, Kieran turned to look at her with owlish green eyes. The girl’s accent was thick and distinctly European, although she couldn’t say from where, and her brow was furrowed slightly as she watched Kieran hold Kal beneath his armpits while the baby kicked and squirmed as she tried to bounce him.

“Here, detka,” she said, ducking her blonde head as she held a finger out to the baby and wiggled it. 

He wailed loudly, bringing the woman down upon them. She whisked Kal off to be changed, leaving the two girls alone, sitting in silence as puffy clouds spoke of the chance of rain outside the window as the countryside chugged past them. The baby was soon back in her lap, and the older girl reached out and took him from Kieran, cradling him gently and smiling as she let out a torrent of a foreign language.

“He will have mama soon.”

“We all will,” Kieran murmured, watching as the baby reached up for the girl, a gummy smile lighting up his face. 

“Net. Only the malen'kiy. The little. We … big. Girls.”

Kieran swallowed thickly as her stomach lurched. From what she’d gleaned, the babies _ were _ chosen first. Then the older boys, taken by farmers to work in the fields, their strong bones and muscle helpful with harvesting and caring for livestock. The last to go were the older girls, still too young to be of any serious help around the house, not much use in the fields, and in the off chance that they were placed with a rich family, too old to be turned into a lady. Kieran was just on the cusp of the latter, but she didn’t have much hope. If they weren’t chosen though, they were to be sent back to the orphanage.

“I come from streets. Bad place for girls. Before that, _ Rossiya _. Worse.”

_ “Rossiya? _You’re Russian?”

“Da, is Russia.”

Kieran eyed the young girl with interest. Her English was broken in a way that suggested she hadn’t long been in America and her blue eyes, bloodshot and red, spoke of new grief. She was a new orphan, perhaps just brought in off the streets after a few weeks cooped up on stoops, begging for scraps and trying to stay out of the way of carts, lest she end up beneath the wheels of one. She seemed too soft to have been out there long.

“You are from?”

“Ireland.”

“Ah, _ Ireland. _Yes, I hear this place.”

A small smile curled Kieran’s mouth as she took in the earnest look in her blue eyes, at the way her blonde hair curled slightly, held back by a navy ribbon. She looked at ease with Kal in her arms, rocking him absentmindedly as he grabbed at her pinafore.

“My name’s Kieran.”

“I am Karina Zorovna Elova.”


	2. Chapter 2

They became an unlikely trio, Kieran, Karina and Kal, in their row on the crowded train of fussy children and strict adults. As they got to know each other, the Russian girl struggling through her broken English and thick accent, Kieran learnt that she’d been born in Saint Petersburg, her father a Soviet weapons designer and her mother born to a respectable family. They were Jewish, and in wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, when the Yevsektsiya was formed to destroy rival parties and suppress Judaism, her parents planned to flee Russia with Karina’s aunt.

Perceived as a Bolshevik supporter for his support in the Bund party, Karina’s father was targeted by the White Army, being a modestly successful military lieutenant and scientist of some social class. Both of her parents had been murdered in the violent campaign, and Karina’s aunt had fled with the young girl, taking their papers and boarding the next ship heading out of the Gulf of Finland. 

They’d sailed across the Baltic Sea in late spring, ice floes still lingering in the brackish sea as they holed up in their second-class cabin, bundled up in winter furs as the bitter European cold seeped into everything. As the young girl described it, Kieran was unsettled by the blurry memories of a similar trip, albeit not quite as freezing. Karina’s trip had taken her through the North Sea, past the east coast of Britain and through the Norwegian Sea. She and her aunt had taken the same trip, around the tip of Canada, and down to National City that Kieran had vague memories of taking with her mother.

It had been a rough crossing, taking longer than the month it should’ve. A week after they’d made it to National City, her aunt had died of pneumonia, leaving Karina stranded in a foreign country with little to no English and no family. Left on the streets, no sympathy from the landlord who threw her out with the rest of the immigrants crowding the streets, she fell in with a group of children who slept in doorways or on stoops. They all looked after each other, stealing what they could, begging on corners, or in Karina’s case, playing the piano in the back of a speakeasy for a few coins left by patrons who gave her leering looks. She wasn’t much of a thief, growing up wealthy, and it was a sharp slap in the face for her to be left on the streets, red-eyed from crying, with no one but a ragged bunch of kids. If one of them got sick or injured, caught up in whatever sickness swept through the humid city or finding themselves trampled beneath the wheels of a truck, there wasn’t much they could do.

She pointed out a few of the other children she’d been brought in with off the streets, some older and some younger than her ten years, all of them irritable and restless trapped inside the train car. They’d been lured off the streets by the Children’s Aid Society with the promise of a hot meal, and somehow wound up on the train too.

“Did you get your hot meal?”

_ “Da. _ Roast beef, potatoes. A bed. But these people? I do not like.”

“It’s charity,” Kieran said, giving her a mild look of surprise. “It’s their Christian duty.”

“I’m Jewish. They do not like that.”

Kieran couldn’t argue with that as she gripped her Claddagh cross necklace in her hand, taking in the way the Russian girl tenderly rocked the baby, with a tenderness that softened the lines of grief, still so new and raw to her. She knew that wherever they ended up, their new familiar wouldn’t be so tolerant of anything from their past lives either.

On the third morning, they crossed the Arizona state line, rattling along the dusty tracks as they passed through stretches of arid desert, the dawn breaking rosy pink over patchy shrubbery and smudges of foothills. It was after lunch by the time they approached Phoenix, the city shimmering in the distance in the waves of heat radiating from the desert. The train was uncomfortably warm, despite the cracked windows, and the smell of too many unwashed bodies and babies made Kieran wrinkle her nose.

“In a few minutes, we’ll be arriving at Union Station. We’ll be switching trains for the next portion of our journey, but not for another half an hour, which means young men, you will need to wear your coats, and young ladies, pinafores on. Be careful not to mess them.”

“Make sure to bring your suitcases, children! And remember your manners; the good citizens of Phoenix no doubt view you as thieves, beggars and sinners. It would be a testament to your good character and the Children’s Aid Society to prove them wrong,” the man chimed in.

The train came to a screeching halt, steam billowing around them and obscuring the first hints of the platform before the pistons hissed and the haze dissipated enough to give them a glimpse. With Kal asleep in her arms, Karina climbed to her feet, and Kieran fetched both of their suitcases, giving the tall girl a small smile before they disembarked. 

Standing on the platform, sweating in the heat of the south and the dry air of the desert city, they were a quiet bunch. Even the disorderly elder boys. Everyone sprawled out, leaning against wooden pillars holding up the ceiling, allowing them some shade from the harsh sunlight as they all complained about how hot it was. Karina held Kal in her arms, the young baby squirming restlessly, pink-cheeked and sweaty in her arms as he held his head up to peer around curiously.

Bored, Kieran made for a stairwell, hesitantly climbing it and vanishing around the corner. Making her way to the top, she found herself in a barrel-vaulted ceiling, dim and mercifully cool, even as skylights let in shafts of yellow sunlight. Smiling to herself, she slipped back down to the platform and poked her head out of the stairwell, spotting the blonde girl not too far away.

“Psst. Karina.”

She turned to glimpse Kieran half-hidden behind the wall, her blue eyes widening with surprise, and then a bewildered frown creasing her brow, before she heeded Kieran’s beckoning gesture, carrying Kal with her. The adults were all occupied, bent over forms or talking to the conductor about their plans, and a large rat scurried along the far brick wall. Terrified shrieks of children pointing towards it made the perfect distraction as Karina left their suitcases behind, slipped behind a pillar and a pile of wooden crates and slipped into the stairwell with Kieran.

Quietly creeping further up the curved staircase, Kieran turned to make sure Karina was still following after her, before bounding up the rest of the steps and making her way back out into the cavernous station. She turned to watch Karina take a cautious step out of the shadows, eyes darting around nervously to make sure no one was watching them.

In the huge terminal, filled with people of all shapes and colours, with wealthy women trailed by servants, men in top hats and morning coats and shop girls in bright dresses, they were just three more people in the rush of bodies. It was too much to take in all at once with its statues and columns, balconies and staircases and wooden benches.

Venturing out to the middle of the station, they both stared up at the blue sky through the glass ceiling, and Kieran smiled as she watched Karina fling an arm out wide, cradling the baby carefully as she spun around in a circle, laughing brightly for the first time since they’d gotten on the train. It was a pure sound, light and sweet, and Kieran couldn’t help but join in.

And then the piercing sound of a whistle split the air and they both froze, faces pale and solemn, eyes wide with innocence, as three policemen in dark uniforms rushed towards them, pushing through the crowd. Turning, dark hair fanning out around her shoulders, Kieran found herself looking at the woman from the train, standing at the top of the stairwell with an angry look on her face, which quickly turned to surprise as one of the policemen grabbed Karina’s arm.

Kieran’s arm was yanked painfully behind her back by another one, and her face darkened with a scowl as she let out a quiet cry of pain. “Trying to get away, were you?”

She didn’t protest, knowing it was no good, and was forced to her knees on the cool floor of the terminal. Karina was on her knees too, Kal screaming in her arms, and as the Russian girl tried to plead, switching between English and Russian as she struggled to find the words, the man from the train appeared in front of them.

It was settled quickly, the bystanders in the suddenly quiet station watching on as the policemen returned the children to the custody of the adults, the threat of punishment clear as they were chastised and dragged back down to the platform by the scruff of their necks. The entire way back down the curving stairwell, as she cradled Kal in her arms, Karina babbled on, occasionally slipping into Russian, how it was her fault, how she’d thought Kal might like to be in the cool air and how Kieran had escorted her to make sure that they didn’t get lost. Her blue eyes were wide with innocence, and she could see the resolve of the matron waver slightly, although her face was still pinched with irritation.

Guilt welling up inside at the fact the other girl was trying to take the fall for her, Kieran couldn’t help but feel touched by it as well. Any of the kids of the train would’ve pushed her onto the tracks if it meant they got a few extra mouthfuls of food, but there was a girl who she’d known for less than three days, willing to take the blame. She felt an odd sensation of warmth in her chest. 

Of course, her guilt was only worsened when Karina’s knuckles were rapped several times with a long wooden ruler, although it seemed a pitiful penalty in comparison to the punishment Kieran had fretted would take place. Karina barely winced, although one knuckle split open, and she shook her hands and sucked on the cut, before slipping back onto the stiff-backed wooden chair with a wink for Kieran. Stripped of their families and identities, fed meagre rations and forced to sit in their seats day in and day out, there wasn’t much they could do to punish the children, short of dropping them off on the side of the tracks.

There was a brief mention of separating the three of them, making Kieran panic for a moment, before it was decided that they could stay together. It would probably make more work for the wrinkled woman to have to deal with a baby, although it didn’t stop her from giving them another stern warning.

With a grin, Karina reached out and took Kal back from Kieran, sensing her unease, and took in the guilt. With a quick laugh, she shrugged. “Do not worry, druzhok. My mama had more sting.”

“Druzhok?”

“Is friend. In Russia, we like … other names.”

“You mean a nickname?”

Expression brightening, Karina nodded eagerly, “da, yes, nickname. You are … Kierya. Is good for boy, not so much a girl.”

Suppressing a laugh, lest she bring down the anger of their caretakers again, Kieran’s eyebrows rose slightly in amusement, before she cocked her head to the side. “And what’s  _ your _ nickname?”

“My papa called me Karishka.”

“Isn’t a nickname supposed to be shorter?”

Scoffing, she gave Kieran a bemused look, “no, why would you think that?”

A slight smile curling her lips, Kieran shrugged, “I think perhaps it’s different in Russia.”

“Rossiya is best at names,” the blonde earnestly assured her as the train lurched into motion with a hiss, the carriage rolling forward on the tracks as the platform slowly started passing them by. “You can call me Kara. Is shorter, yes?”

“Kara,” Kieran tested the name out, nodding with satisfaction. It wasn’t quite so foreign; she imagined that her new family would allow her to keep that name. Maybe. “It’s a nice name.”

Face brightening with delight, Kara beamed at her, before Kieran turned to look out the window. The days were growing shorter as the year started to draw to a close, and dusk was already upon them as they passed through Phoenix and back out into the rolling desert. The sky was violet and the edges of the landscape were blurred by the fading light, the last few shimmering waves of heat distorting their vision on the horizon. 

The city receded into the distance behind them and darkness fell, turning everything into an impenetrable wall of darkness beyond the carriage. As the sweltering October sun of the south faded, the air grew mercifully cooler, drifting in on a warm breeze smelling of hot sand. It was a relief after the stuffy heat of the train as it chugged along.

A quietness descended over their carriage as night set in, and one of the women climbed to her feet and stared out at the sea of tired faces and fussy children. “Lights out everyone. Make sure you get some rest; you’ll need to be on your best behaviour tomorrow to make a good impression.”

“What if no one picks me?” a voice called out from further back.

There was a tense silence, fear palpable in the air as worry radiated from the collection of children. It had been on everyone’s mind of course, but no one had voiced their concerns before. Now, as the reality of their circumstances loomed startlingly close, it was all any of them could think about. Kieran was quiet as she contemplated Kara’s words from their first conversation, how the babies would be picked first, and then the boys strong enough to work the fields or help around a farm, the girls young enough to be educated and made into ladies, and the ones old enough to help with household chores. Kieran was somewhere in the middle of being too young and too old. 

Oddly enough, it didn’t fill her with fear though. She’d been in an orphanage for years, and if she wasn’t picked, she assumed she’d just go straight back into one. It wasn’t a good thought, and she hated the thought of the crowded dorms with the late-night sobbing and muffled coughs, the bullies and the scraps they were fed, but she only remembered snatches of a life before that existence. She thought it would be worse for Kara. 

“If you’re not chosen at the first stop, there will be more opportunities. There’s no need to worry; it’s uncommon for a child to make the return trip to National City.”

“What if I don’t  _ want _ to go with them?”

“What if they beat us?”

There were clamouring voices, fighting to make themselves heard over each other as people voiced their concerns, their fears, until the hushed quietness of the carriage was brimming with anxiety. It would be a miracle if they all settled back down and slept peacefully. All of them, aside from the ones too young to comprehend, would be thinking about their fate. It very well might change the next day.

“There’s no accounting for taste, I will admit. Some are looking for certain qualities in the child they take home with them, whether that be a baby or a hardworking boy. While you should all hope to be placed on the first stop, it doesn’t always work that way, and it would be best if you kept faith in the knowledge that the path of your journey, whether it be long or short, will guide you to where you’re meant to be.”

Kieran glanced at Kara, the two of them sharing an anxious look. No one could account for the kind of people they would be picked by, whether they’d be treated kindly, whether they’d be beaten and starved as they laboured for their new family. They were heading toward the unknown, fear rife amongst the rest of the children, and they had no choice but to let themselves be towed along with the steadfast chugging of the train. 

She slept badly that night, Kal waking several times with mewling cries as Kara tried to soothe him, both of them sharing bleary-eyed glances in the silver moonlight. A saffron dawn broke the darkness, bold streaks of yellowing turning the sandy landscape golden. Wide awake, full of anticipation and nervousness that twisted her stomach uncomfortably, Kieran leant against the window, watching the shadows shorten as the edges of everything sharpened into perfect clarity. Kara’s head rested on her shoulder and Kal was splayed over both of their knees, finally asleep.

Morning had well and truly come by the time the Russian girl woke, slowly sitting up and blinking slowly, rubbing her tired eyes and stretching her stiff arms out, before reaching down to tenderly brush Kal’s shock of dark hair out of his face. 

Kieran ran a hand through her hair as it fanned out around her shoulders, combing it as best she could, before smoothing it down and neatly retying the bow around a section of it. She caught Kara looking at her and gave her a small smile, freezing when she reached out to brush a stray strand out of her face.

“You have beautiful hair.”

Smiling, Kieran’s cheeks dimpled, and she offered to do Kara’s hair for her too, running her fingers through the silky golden curls, tying it back with her ribbon and admiring the way it caught the sunlight spilling in through the carriage windows. They were both nervous, but they had each other, and Kal, and Kara gave her hand a quick squeeze, her face animated by a sudden ferocity, childish eyes bright with determination.

“We make promise, Kierya. We find each other one day.”

A puzzled look creased Kieran’s brow, her mouth pulling down at the corners, and she gave Kara a grim look. She was young, but she knew that they were about to be ripped apart, taken away from each other to live far away. The chances of them ever seeing each other again were slim. So slim that she hadn’t dared to think about how much it would hurt to lose the only friend she’d ever had, and only for a few days. It was shocking just how quickly they’d bonded, and it saddened Kieran to know that their time would be coming to an end so fast. 

“How can we? Even if we’re both picked at the same place … we’re going to end up far away from each other.”

“This I know.”

“And my name will be changed. It’s a boy’s name, even in Ireland. I won’t be Kieran anymore, you won’t be able to find me, Karina. And  _ your _ name will be changed too.”

“I know this also. But we still try, da?”

Shifting in her seat, a troubled look clouding her features, Kieran gave her a grim look. Even though she was two years older than her, Kara had a naïvety to her, her blue eyes wide with childlike innocence, round cheeks and a bright grin that Kieran just  _ lacked. _ Perhaps it was suffering so much loss at such a young age, starved of a proper family to grow up with and shower her with affection, of anything but the bare necessities to stay alive, but she didn’t share the same optimism as Kara did. 

“This is supposed to be a fresh start. We’re supposed to let go of the past.”

Waving a hand dismissively, Kara gave her a hopeful look, eyes beseeching her to promise, and she reached out for Kieran’s hand, holding it between her warm ones. “We let go, but never forget. Is big difference.”

And Kieran knew she  _ wouldn’t _ forget. After a few days, Kara had all but been cemented in her memory, the only friend she’d ever had, one of the few moments of kindness her cruel life had known, and her shoulders slumped as she inclined her head.

“I promise I’ll look for you.”

Delight bloomed on Kara’s face as she bridged the small gap between them, enveloping her in a hug and pressing two gentle kisses to the young girl’s cheeks, affection and happiness radiating from her. “We are like family, even if the pick new for us. We never forget.”

“No,” Kieran murmured, a smile splitting her face as warmth filled her chest at the thought of being family, “never forget.”

They travelled on further, already across the border of New Mexico after a night of non-stop travel, a blue sky shining overhead without a cloud in sight, before they started to slow. Three sets of train tracks paralleled the one they were on, brown wood and dusty iron, and the train car smelled like sweat and sour milk. The adults were conferring at the front of the train, before they turned and woke the children who had managed to sleep through the morning.

After a run-through of instructions on manners and decorum, making sure shirts were tucked in and hair was neatly brushed back, a few cuffs around the ear and chastisements, they waited patiently as they pulled into the station with squealing brakes and great billows of white steam. The platform with the surrounding buildings and people milling about were a welcome change of scenery after miles of nothing but shrubbery, fields and empty desert. 

Gathering their belongings, they all lined up neatly in rows, following careful orders as they fought to keep their fear off their faces, and stepped off the train. The main was talking to a few policemen in dark uniforms, wariness creeping up on Kieran after the events of yesterday, and she carried their suitcases as Kara carried Kal in her arms, the baby grabbing fistfuls of her blonde hair while she spoke to him in rapid Russian, her voice soft as she untangled his little fist. 

Hands clammy around the handles of their cases, anticipation heavy in the air as a terrible feeling of dread filled her, Kieran wanted to say something to Kara but didn’t know what. There were no reassurances she could make that her own ears would believe, and the fear of not knowing what they were about to walk into made her throat close up. Surely it couldn’t be  _ that _ bad.

At the sharp blow of a whistle from a policeman, they were made to line up again, before being led up a wide stone staircase, their feet pounding a solemn rhythm on the steps, as if they marched to their deaths, and were led down a corridor lit by gas lamps. Stepping out into the terminal of the small station, they were met with a small crowd of whispering adults staring at them expectantly. Kieran caught sight of a sign attached to a pillar, detailing their arrival for the good citizens of Santa Fe to come and see them.

Propelled forward by her own feet, as if she was in a dream, Kieran let the sounds of the terminal wash over her. The conversation grew louder as the children were marched in, a vendor was roasting peanuts at a cart, while a young boy cried out the latest news, a bundle of papers at his feet, coppers parting hands with gentlemen in top hats as they bought issues. It was warm inside, the air dry and still, and sweat prickled the back of her neck as she followed the children in front of her. Even the older boys lost their roughness, revealing the youthful looks of scared children, while a few of the younger children sniffled quietly.

In front of a large oak door, they gathered in a loose semi-circle, and one of the women led them in a quick prayer, some children bowing their heads in pensive devotion while others glanced around, hands in pockets. All of them were quick to intone an  _ ‘amen’ _ as the woman stopped talking though, before her sharp eagle eyes swept over the group.

“Now, remember, not all of you will be picked today, but that just means there will be more opportunity for you at the next stop. If you don’t find a family to match with, you will simply board the train and we’ll make our way to the next station, and onwards again and again.”

The man clapped his hands together and with what was supposed to be an encouraging smile, shouldered open the large wooden door to reveal a wood-panelled room with no windows. They were led down the centre aisle, towards a low stage set at the front, the air close and all eyes trained on them. People stepped aside for them as they were paraded through the crowd, and Kieran found herself looking around owlishly, wondering if perhaps her new family was standing amongst them.

Lined up by height, Kara and Kieran were separated by a fair number of children, fear in their exchanged glances as they realised that this could very well be goodbye. Perhaps they’d go to good homes, have a life they’d never imagined in a quaint house with plenty to eat and kind new mother’s. Yet she trembled at the thought anyway.

As she watched, the man stepped up onto the stage, looking out at the sea of faces staring back at him, and he gave them a wan smile before gesturing to the children assembled behind him. “A simple matter of paperwork is all that stands between you and one of the children on this stage. They’re all strong and healthy - good for farm work or housework. You have the chance to save a child from destitution and poverty, and I believe it is not too great an exaggeration to add sin and depravity.”

The woman nodded as he spoke, and Kieran couldn’t help but wonder if they’d practised this speech, or how many times he’d spoken these words to the same rooms before.

“You have the opportunity to do a good deed in the Lord’s eyes,  _ and _ get something in return. All that is expected of you is to feed, clothe and educate the chosen child until the age of eighteen. And provide religious education, of course. It’s also our deepest hope that you’ll develop a fondness for your child, and embrace them as your own.”

He paused to give them all a congenial smile, before clearing his throat. “The child will be yours for free on a ninety-day trial basis, at which point, you may choose to send them back if that’s your desire.”

And then the stage was full of people inspecting the children, and Kieran blinked in surprise as she found herself being scrutinised by a woman before she turned away. There was a desperation to some of the children, strained smiles on their faces as they did their best to look presentable and desirable.

Neither of them was picked that day, although a few were selected and led away by their new parents. It was with intense, surprising relief, that the trio collapsed back onto their seats on the train and shared jubilant smiles, the baby sitting in Kara’s lap as she reached out to hold Kieran’s hand. 

So onwards they went, heading for Texas, making multiple stops along the way as the days slipped by and nobody picked them. It was surprising they hadn’t picked Kal, but for most of the people looking for children in the deep south, they wanted labourers, not babies to waste food on with nothing in return. 

Crossing Oklahoma, they made their way to Kansas next, and it was with nervous apprehension that they climbed off the train at each stop, their numbers growing smaller and smaller as a smattering of children were picked at each stop. Every time, Kieran and Kara gave each other uncertain looks of hopeful optimism, wondering if this time would be the last. 

It was no different as they stopped at a small farming town called Smallville, repeating the process of lining up in a room while they were inspected by the adults who had come to have a look. This time, as Kieran watched, standing closer to Kara these days as more of the taller children were taken, a couple approached Kara, who held Kal tenderly in her arms, and she could hear as the woman reached out and asked to hold him.

“Hello, little boy,” she said, “what’s your name?”

They were an elderly couple, perhaps childless, and the smile on the woman’s face let Kieran know that they wanted a child for love, not labour. The man was more stoic at her shoulders, already greying slightly, but his expression softened as he rested a hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“His name’s Kal,” Kara informed them, and the couple drifted further away, the woman bouncing him in her arms as the man reached out to run a calloused hand over the baby’s round cheek.

“What about that one?” a man asked, pointing at Kara.

“Don’t like the look of her,” the woman said, sniffing as she gave Kara a haughty look. "Russian."

“She doesn’t like the look of  _ you _ either,” Kieran bluntly replied, as all the children between her and Kara shrank back, giving her looks of surprise.

Stubbornly raising her chin, Kieran balled her hands into fists as the man stepped away from Kara, hulking and glowering as he planted himself in front of her. Swallowing thickly, Kieran met his dark gaze without flinching, and he leant down to her eye level, trying to intimidate her.

“What’d you say?”

“Your wife has no cause to talk like that.”

The slap was quick and painful, heat flaring on Kieran’s cheek as her head was whipped to the side and she stumbled off balance. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth and as she held a hand to her face, she realised that her lip had been split open. Face flaming red, she stepped back into line as one of the matrons from the train descended upon them in her black clothes like an overgrown bat. 

“What’s the problem here?”

“This girl talked back to my husband.”

Ducking her head under the scrutinising look of the matron, Kieran shuffled her feet, shoulders hunched as she sucked at her split lip with a sullen look on her face. 

“The girl is … spirited. Irish. What do you say to this gentleman, Kieran?”

Knowing very well what she wanted to say, Kieran scuffed the toe of her shoe along the wooden floorboards, staring at her polished shoes. Chewing on the word with bitterness, she finally let it fall from her lips in a flat tone. “Sorry.”

As this all unfolded and was quickly settled, the older woman holding Kal was looking at him with adoration, a smile on her face as she gently stroked his cheek, before deciding that he was the one. With her split lip and smarting cheek, Kieran watched with brooding eyes as Kieran stepped forward as the woman turned away with her new baby in her arms.

“You need help with baby? I am good cook. Sewing and the- the piano.”

With a pitying look on her kind face, the woman reached out and laid a hand on Kara’s shoulder. “Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry. We can’t afford two. We just came here for a baby - a baby to complete our family. I’m sure you’ll find-”

She trailed off as Kara stepped back, shrugging out from under her touch, shoulders slumped in defeat as her blue eyes shone with tears and unbridled pain. “You will be good mama, I think.”

With a soft smile, the woman nodded, cradling Kal’s head against her chest. And then she was gone, taking the youngest of their trio with her as her and her husband signed the paperwork and took Kal away to his new life. The rest of the children were herded back onto the train afterwards, a few more of them gone now, and Kieran had the back of her hands rapped a few times with the wooden ruler as she winced, before flopping back down on her seat beside Kara.

There was a sombre mood hanging over the two of them as they held hands over the blankets spread over them, the evening's cooler now as they’d started heading northerly. They didn’t speak about what had happened - the slap or the fact that Kal had been picked and neither of them had - and there was a sense of quiet relief, even if there was a part of them both that was getting desperate to be picked. 

As dusk set that evening, they changed courses for a westerly trip back towards the coast, stopping through Colorado, Utah and Nevada, before they slipped back into California at the tip of the state. They passed by pastures and fields, shimmering blue lakes and trees laden with autumn apples and a shock of orange leaves. The weather was cooler, the sky dotted with puffy white clouds and the smell of rain in the air. It would’ve been nice if it wasn’t for the claustrophobia of the train car and the impending doom of being separated from the only friend she had left in the world.

As it was, when they stopped at a small city, surrounded by smaller farming towns, that was the day she and Kara parted ways. They didn’t know it as they gathered their bags, helped tied each other’s hair back neatly in ribbons and gave each other’s hand an encouraging squeeze. In two lines, considerably shorter than the first time they’d performed the routine, they’d made their way to a room in the terminal, gathered at one end as usual and were scrutinised by the waiting adults.

When a couple stepped up to Kara, Kieran felt her heart leap into her throat, taking in the kind blue eyes of the woman with blonde hair. Her husband stood a step back, surveying the line of children, his dark eyes looking at a few of the older boys that were left, too rowdy and sullen to be desirable. She watched as Kara stared up at them from beneath her heavy fringe, a doleful look in her eyes and a wariness to her as the woman crouched slightly.

“Hi, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

“Karina Zorovna Elova.”

“It’s a pretty name,” the woman said, reaching out to gently brush Kara’s bangs out of her eyes, “my name’s Eliza. It’s nice to meet you.”

“And you, ma’am.”

Eyes creasing at the corners, Eliza quietly laughed, and Kieran knew at that moment that she’d already made her decision, even as her husband continued to look at the other boys, smiling at them as he asked them if they’d ever worked on a farm before. Turning to her husband, the blonde woman smiled brightly, and Kara met Kieran’s eyes, a look of sorrow in them as if she’d come to the same conclusion. 

Their hands met for a brief moment, the lines having grown so short that they had slipped next to each other without their height difference being noticed. Kieran squeezed Kara’s hand gently and gave her a strained smile, happy that she was being picked, even as it hurt. The woman seemed kind, pulling on the man’s arm as she towed him back towards Kara.

“I thought you wanted a boy for the farm,” he said, his voice deep and rumbling, yet kind, his eyes warm as he smiled down at Kara.

“I know, but …  _ look _ . Isn’t she sweet?”

Kara gave them a hesitant smile, nose wrinkling and cheeks dimpling, and just like that, they were signing the papers for her and Kara was rushing towards Kieran, grabbing her shoulders and quickly kissing both cheeks, before pulling back and giving her a frantic look.

“I will find you, Kierya.”

With the last squeeze of her hand, she was being steered away by her new mother’s arm around her shoulders, a smile on the woman’s face as they left the station together. With a last glance over her shoulder, a pining look in her eyes, Kara was gone from sight, and Kieran was dealt a devastating blow as she lost the only friend she had in the world. It was a nice thought, to think they’d find each other again, a small comfort to help ease their fears about their new lives, but she knew that it was only a wishful thought. Just like her being placed with a new family.

When she was ushered back onto the train, later on, her shoulders slumped with defeat and hollowness inside her chest, she slowly sank back down onto the hard seat and blinked back the burning feeling in her eyes. Alone, she stared out the window and watched the platform milling with people slowly empty as they all boarded the train, and then the small city fade from sight as they lurched out of the station in a cloud of steam, heading north to Oregon.

With each town or city they passed through, Kieran grew more sullen, standing stiffly in line with a scowl on her face, her eyes red-rimmed with bruises beneath from restless nights, and each person who approached her quickly retreated. They made their way back east, cutting through the middle of the country, before turning south after Iowa, and snaking their way back and forth as they made their way towards Metropolis. There, they’d pick up another bunch of orphans that crowded the city, children of dead immigrants or street urchins clogging the streets with their begging and petty theft. And then they’d make the reverse trip back to National City, with the hope that somewhere along the way, the rest of the children would be whisked away.

Eventually, they pulled into Metropolis, further north than they’d been yet, with white skies and a perpetual greyness to everything. It had been raining heavily the past couple of weeks, and a mist enveloped the tall buildings as the city came into sight. Trees bearing withering leaves flashed by, the outskirts of the city rapidly approaching with sprawling neighbourhoods of small houses with neat gardens, visible from the tracks.

When they came to a screeching halt, steam billowing around the train car as raindrops slid down the windows, it was with weary defeat that Kieran fetched her case and dragged herself into line, before disembarking with the few children that were left. It had become quieter and quieter the further they’d travelled, more seats being vacated and an oppressive air of despair hanging over the few that were still occupied. They all trudged in a line with tired looks in their eyes, shoulders stooped and a hint of sadness to their expressions. That would go away the moment they were paraded around in front of the potential parents when they would force smiles to their faces, desperate hope in their eyes.

But not Kieran. She’d long since given up, slouching, letting her hair spill untidily around her face as she scuffed her shoes along the floor. Her slovenliness earned her more than one rap across the knuckles, but she couldn’t even bring herself to care. She was at the point where she thought she might try her hand at living on the streets; how hard could it be to pickpockets and steal from a shop front stall? Growing up in an orphanage, she’d been surrounded by children with those very talents, heard all the horror stories about boys losing their fingers or being arrested, but she’d also watched those same storytellers pick the locks on the cabinet where the dry biscuits were kept for the occasional treat. It didn’t look so hard to be a thief.

As they all stood on the platform, Kieran eyed the group of children waiting to board with them again when they switched trains. There would be no hope of adoption here, where they were trying to send their own orphans west. Just a reprieve from the train, to stand on the platform with the dismal rain and chilly November air, blankets wrapped around themselves to fend off the wind while their stomachs rumbled with hunger and they eyed the newcomers with suspicion. It would be an hour yet before they would be able to board their new train. 

Bored, sick of the endless cycle of trains and disappointment, and angry at her worthlessness, Kieran wandered away from the group, hugging her pinafore to herself as she set to kicking one of the stone pillars holding up the platform roof. There was a stairwell nearby, just like the one in Phoenix, where she’d coerced Kara into seeing the terminal with her, and for a brief moment, she paused.

Last time, they’d gotten into trouble, but nobody was looking. If she was quick, she might be able to dart upstairs and slip out into the writhing mass of people rushing back and forth and sneak outside before anyone even noticed she was missing. The adults were bust conferring with the new matrons, more children than they were used to milling about on the platform. It was the perfect opportunity to just run away. She had her suitcase of paltry clothes she could sell, and she could find a bridge to sleep under, a barrel to warm her frozen fingers over. The cold didn’t bother her so much; she knew what real cold was like. 

Looking out at the lashing rain being blown under the shelter of the roof, she paused, lips pursed, a shiver running through her before she squared her shoulders and pressed her mouth into a flat line. It was now or never. It was better to be homeless in a big city than in the middle of nowhere, with nowhere to go and nowhere to find help. In a flash, she was behind the pillar, ducking behind the wall of the stairwell, and her feet were pounding up the steps as her breath came quickly, heart beating rapidly in her chest.

Bursting into the terminal, Kieran looked around with unabashed wonder, taking in the grandeur of the old stone building. It was the most lavish building she’d ever been in, the air sweet with the smell of candy apples and roasting nuts, rich coffee and overwhelming noise. The place was packed, men and women and children of all fashions walking past, some in silks and furs, others in cheap woollen coats. None of them paid her any attention.

Slipping into the crowd, she was fast, like a fish darting through the current of a river. In and out, she let herself get lost, towed along by the flow of people making their way towards the exit, surrounded by dark suits and colourful dresses. The doors came into sight and she let out a pent up breath, pushing forward with her suitcase in tow, ignoring the indignant shouts as she squeezed through small gaps, twisting her wiry frame and ducking around people. 

Rain splattered her face as she burst out onto the grey street, pausing on the steps of the terminal with a look of delight on her face. Her woollen coat was peppered with fat raindrops and it plastered her hair to her pallid cheeks, her breath visible before her, and Kieran clutched her suitcase tightly, glancing back at the doors as she was jostled by impatient citizens going about their day. No one had come for her yet, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t soon. She had to make herself scarce.

In a panic, she ran down the stone steps, cold hand clutching the bronze rail to her left before she splashed through a brown puddle with an oily sheen on top, freezing, scummy water splashing her shins as she took off down the street. She drew disapproving stares as she pounded down the sidewalk, dodging between gentlemen wearing top hats and morning coats, clutching canes and briefcases in their hands, elegant women in the latest fashions from Paris, huffing in complaint at the child that nearly bowled them over with her eager dash for freedom. 

She passed paperboys and shoe shiners standing in alcoves, vendors selling hot food on street corners and cab drivers leant against the sides of their soft-top cars, smoking cigarettes beneath umbrellas as they waited for passengers. Despite the rain and cold, the city moved on, a sea of black umbrellas keeping their owners dry, and Kieran was breathless and soaking as she tried to put as much distance between herself and the train station as she could. 

Passing by jewellery stores and bookstores, butchers and bakers, cobblers and boutiques, she ran and ran, crossing streets before horses and carts, drivers yelling at her, passing over vents with wisps of warm steam curling out of them. And then she turned a corner, looking back over her shoulder with an alert, panicked look in her eyes, and collided with the solid mass of a tall gentleman rounding the corner.

Bouncing back off him with the force of the collision, Kieran sprawled onto the wet pavement, scraping her hands painfully and dropping her suitcase in the process. A pitiful sight of sodden clothing, plastered hair and doleful eyes swimming with tears as she looked down at her grazed palms, bottom lip trembling slightly, Kieran looked up at the shadow that fell across her, an umbrella shading her as she was given a momentary reprieve from the downpour.

A big hand reached down and pulled her to her feet by the collar of her damp coat, and she looked up into brown eyes with a fearful look on her face. The man was tall, greying at the temples with broad shoulders and a sharpness to his features. He wore a tailored black three-piece suit, a heavy overcoat with a fur collar, and had a tophat jammed down on his head. A wealthy man carrying a cane. Kieran had watched them beat street urchins with them before, haughty looks on their faces as they turned their noses up, and she shrank back slightly.

“You should watch where you’re going, little lady,” the man said, his voice deep yet gentle, his expression softening slightly with surprise as he stooped down to pick her suitcase up from the gutter and looked at the small girl in front of him.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she quickly said, drawing in a shuddering breath as she tried not to cry, dripping water spilling down her bitten cheeks as she looked at him with wide eyes.

“Don’t fret,” he said, shaking off the wet case, before holding it back out to her, “where’s your mother, girl?”

Swallowing thickly, Kieran reached out to take the case in one hand, rubbing her eye with the other, palms smarting, before she replied. “Don’t have one, sir.”

“An orphan, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

He crouched slightly in front of her, careful to keep her shaded by the wide umbrella, even as the shoulders of his coat were pelted by rain. Reaching out, he tipped her chin up with a gentle touch, his expression somewhat wary as if caught off guard, and he produced a soft handkerchief with a flourish. Wiping her cheeks dry, he gave her a small smile, laced with sadness and old pain, yet cut through with longing and wonder.

“What’s your name?”

“Kieran, sir.”

He let out a quiet chuckle, brown eyes creasing with amusement. “Kieran, eh? Irish are you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Holding out a big gloved hand, he smiled as she slipped her small hand in his, letting him engulf it in supple leather. “My name is Lionel. How would you like to have a new family, Kieran?”

“With you, sir?”

“Yes.”

Looking at him with wariness in her eyes, taking in the expensive clothes he wore and the curious spark in his eyes, she found herself wanting to believe that he was a good man. She knew not to talk to strangers, but he had been kind to her, even if it was for a brief moment. And she was cold and tired and so  _ miserable. _ All Kieran wanted was a family. Too tired to even weigh her choice properly, she decided to trust him, a hesitant smile flitting across her face as her shoulders slumped with relief. 

Although she hadn’t even considered the offer properly, had been entirely too trusting in her naïvety, it was by a stroke of luck that she found herself a good home. A stroke of luck and a face that had felt like a kick to the stomach for the man who’d once held a baby with the exact same eyes and dark hair in his arms. So she put her hand in his, hefted her suitcase and let him call them a cab, not even knowing just how fortunate she was in that moment.


	3. Chapter 3

The car took Kieran out of the city and she watched the dreary greyness of the tall, beautiful buildings fade behind her as rain lashed at the windows. Autumn was coming to a close and the weather was colder in the northern reaches of the country, but she was warm beneath the massive coat draped over her by the man sitting on the other side of the car. Kieran cast him furtive glances as they left the business district behind them, her heart fluttering in her chest as she waited for him to kick her out, to attack her or kidnap her away to some place no one would ever find her. But he just sat there jotting down notes in a moleskine notebook with a Montblanc pen, his top hat on the seat between them. 

Driving down roads glistening with rain, they passed by trees losing their leaves and some that still held the crimson touches of autumn, and Kieran looked outside the windows with wide eyes. Cars trundled in and out of the city, driving over the wide bridge bridging the harbour of steely grey water, steam ships and fishing trawlers mingling with pleasure barges and yachts docked along the pier. The day was growing later, and the city started to light up behind them, glowing yellow and white through the haze of rain. She’d never been anywhere so grand before, and she was enamoured by it as they left it behind.

She didn’t yet know what was waiting for her ahead, but Kieran was brimming with tension, her damp suitcase sitting by her feet as they went further and further. Miles outside the city, when the neighbourhoods of clustered houses dropped off to acres of land, they finally slowed. Through the blanketing greyness of the day, she watched as the driver approached the gated fence of an estate.

The wrought iron gates stood open and gravel crunched beneath the wheels as the car drove up the long driveway, bordered by maples and ash and oaks before they came out of the tunnel of trees to the yellow glow of a sprawling building. The air was knocked from Lena’s lungs as her lips parted, and she pressed her face against the window, taking in the sight of the colonial-style mansion that was visible at the end of the driveway.

The driveway itself split into a long oval, bordered with neatly trimmed hedges and sculpted topiary, three fountains that were still shooting jets of water into the air, despite the dismal weather, and a stretch of garden with beautiful trees. The gravel turned to slate paving stones set in a scalloped pattern as they turned left at the beginning of the oval driveway. As they neared the building, Kiera noticed a footbridge spanning the garden in the middle of the driveway, with steps descending down to a small courtyard with doors leading beneath the house itself. 

She’d never seen anything like it in her life. Kieran hadn’t even _ known _ houses could be so big, so luxurious and expensive, and she turned to look at Lionel with an awestruck expression on her face. He was watching her with an expectant look on his face, and he chuckled at her expression, his own face softening slightly in the process. 

Turning back to the mansion, Kieran took in the grey stone, the steep mansard roof of slate shingles, the ivy creeping up the facade of the house, the white statues on either side of the steps leading to the wide wooden doors and the gas lamps on the footbridge. The carved white stone around each doorway and the masses of arched windows shining brightly with light, the chimneys peeking up from between gabled sections of the roof, and the outbuildings to the right. There was too much to take in and she couldn’t even begin to wonder what was inside. What could possibly take up so much space?

The driver came to a stop outside the steps leading up to the doors, and Lionel paid the cab driver, before picking up Kieran’s suitcase, his briefcase, and gripped his umbrella and cane in the other hand. She climbed out of his open door and he slammed it shut behind her, before resting a hand on her shoulder and urging her forward.

Almost as if she was in a dream - which was still questionable - Kieran moved up the steps in a daze, shivering slightly in the cold as she clutched Lionel’s massive coat around her thin chest. The door was pulled open by a man in an impeccable tuxedo, who respectfully inclined his head as he stepped aside, and Kieran stepped into the cavernous foyer with unabashed shock, while the butler stared at her with wide eyes.

“Sir?”

“Take these things up to the nursery, Bruno.”

“Yes, sir.”

The butler shut the door and hurried to relieve Lionel of his belongings, casting Kieran another sharp, curious look before he swept past, following his instructions. Lionel’s warm hand enveloped hers and towed her across the marble floor of the foyer as Kieran took in the marble floor, inlaid with a gold pattern that she couldn’t make out this close. Electricity lit the place up like a beacon, spilling from sconces on the walls, and staircases curved up both sides of the room.

Oil paintings in gilt frames hung from the walls in various sizes, and the walls themselves were hung in heavy fabric wallpaper in an art nouveau damask-style of foliage in warm golden browns and deep emerald greens. Pillars of black veined marble reached up to the ceiling twenty feet above them, and Kieran couldn’t help but look around in amazement, taking in the polished mahogany furniture, the twinkling crystal chandelier hanging overhead and the arrangements of flowers perfuming the air. It was the most amazing place she’d ever been.

“Come along, Kieran.”

She quickened her pace as the tall man took long strides, and her brow creased with concern as he made for the double glass doors set into the panelling of the double staircase. They already stood open, the panes painted with floral imagery, and she stepped onto crimson carpet so thick that her feet seemed to sink in the softness of it. The hallway was no different in terms of grandeur, lit well by wall sconces and chandeliers set at intervals, closed wooden doors hiding the rooms beyond, while flowers, paintings, mirrors, narrow tables against the walls, vases from overseas and statues with their arms broken off filled the long space.

They turned left at the end of the hallway and continued on through the maze of rooms, before they came to a stop at a door on the left side of the hallway, and Lionel flung it open to expose a wall with dark panelled walls. A fire bathed the spacious room in a comforting orange glow, a chandelier shone brightly overhead, and the room was stuffed with wingback armchairs. A Chesterfield sofa in russet leather with rolled arms and bulleted with small buttons sat before the fire, a low coffee table in front of it and a Persian rug beneath. 

Off to one side a woman sat at a marble chess board with a young boy across from her. Her hair was pulled back, giving her a severe look, and she paused as she made to move a piece on the board. Her face stiffened and she slowly rose to her feet, giving Kieran a good look at the dress she was wearing. It was a silk blend crepe in navy, fitting loosely with a wide, flat collar and a natural waist sash. Her legs were stockinged and she wore a pair of mid-heel oxfords, adding to her already towering height, made all the more taller by the vertical embroidery and row of buttons. 

“Lillian,” Lionel gruffly rumbled.

“What did you _ do?” _

Wide-eyed and meek, Kieran wrapped the coat tighter around herself, half-hidden behind Lionel as she eyed the sharp-tongued woman and basked in the warmth of the room. Weak light spilled in through the floor-to-ceiling windows against the opposite wall, velvet emerald curtains held back with embroidered sashes.

“I found her on the streets. She’s an orphan.”

“Then _ take her to an orphanage _.”

_ “Look _ at her, Lily.”

The woman scowled, arms folded over her chest as she lifted her chin, but even still, she couldn’t help but glance over at Kieran, who was gently nudged forward by Lionel. There was an imperceptible change in her expression, just the tiniest hint of the sharpness softening as her face went slack with surprise. Eyes widening ever so slightly, she paled and sank back down onto the chair.

“We discussed this.”

Her lips were pressed into a thin line and she looked faint, her hand going to the pearls around her neck. There was a note of accusation in her voice as she pinned Kieran with her green eyes. Still, Lionel brushed a hand over the girl’s hair and gave his wife a hard look.

“I know. And this is what we’re doing.”

Smiling down at the young girl at his side, her urged her forward. “Kieran, this is your new mother.”

Lillian stared at her with furious eyes, full of pain and unbridled anger, before climbing to her feet and walking out of the room. With a sigh, Lionel let her go and gently led Kieran over to the chess set, giving his son a stern nod.

“And this is your new brother, Alexander.”

She looked into a pair of curious brown eyes and felt shy as she half-turned into Lionel’s waist. The boy had to have been nearly twice her age, a youthful look to his soft face, on the verge of manhood, but he smiled at her with delight, resetting the chess set before climbing to his feet.

“How do you do?” he asked, crouching slightly before her, wearing long socks and knee-length shorts of a schoolboy. 

“Pleased to meet you,” she mumbled.

“You can call me Lex.”

She gave him a small smile, before a shiver ran through her. Damp, hungry and exhausted, the events of the day seemed to catch up with Kieran as she was surrounded by new people in a new house. As if realising that, Lionel put an arm around her shoulders and led her back out of the room, leading her toward the foyer again with a purposeful stride.

“Mercy!”

They lingered there for a few moments, before a young woman appeared in the mouth of a hallway, quickly walking over to Lionel and ducking her head in deference. “Sir.”

“This is my new daughter. Draw her a bath and bring her back down in something dry. There’s a suitcase in her bedroom.”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

Kieran was taken by the hand and led up the left curving staircase, down the hallway of the north wing of the mansion, and found herself in a spacious bathroom. The floor was white marble, white ceramic subway tiles rose halfway up the walls, and above it was black. A small light lit the room in a circle of yellow light, and Kieran took in the white fixtures. 

A pedestal sink was set against one wall, a tall speckled gilt mirror hung above it, an _ indoor _ toilet with a chain that the young girl gaped at, and a clawfoot tub with a nickel finish and exposed plumbing. Crown moulding edged the white ceiling and a walnut wood cabinet stood against one wall, pristine white towels neatly folded on the shelves above, while the drawers held soap and lotions and cloths. 

Mercy put the plug in the tub and ran the water, which came out hot and steaming. That was another marvel, and Kieran stood on the tiled floor as she watched the brunette woman move about the room, setting soap on a dish on a small end table with a scrubbing brush beside it, fragrancing the bathwater with rosewater as it slowly filled. There were steel vents for heating, and despite the frigid cold of the marble and tiles, the air was warm.

A short while later, she found herself stripped of her sodden clothes and sitting up to her shoulders in the deep tub of water, feeling the warmth seep into every inch of her. Her cheeks turned rosy from the steam and her hair was black with the wetness of it, slicked back and silky as it fanned out beneath the water. 

With gentle motions, Mercy scrubbed her clean, her voice kind as she cast the girl furtive glances. Her hair was washed and by the time she was being goaded out of the sweet-smelling hot water with a fluffy towel held between outstretched arms it almost felt too good to be true. She was _ clean _. Her skin smelled of soap and the faint odour of sweat and damp wool from her clothes were gone.

A spare pair of clothes were brought out of her suitcase, secondhand and ill-fitting, but clean and dry, and with her hair dry and brushed, tied back neatly with her length of ribbon, Kieran was presentable enough to be led back downstairs in her scuffed shoes.

The sound of raised voices and the tinkling sound of something breaking drifted towards her as she stepped onto the length of crimson diamond-patterned stair runner, brass carpet rods at the base of each step to keep it in place, and with apprehension she allowed herself to be led towards a drawing-room, the closed door opening to reveal her new parents standing in the midst of the cozy room.

A fire blazed in the hearth and the sun was setting beyond the golden damask silk curtains held back with ties. Some sort of liquor was pooling on a Turkish rug of rich greens and yellows, a velvet loveseat of carved walnut sitting in front of it. Lionel ran a hand over his face, before he caught sight of Kieran hovering uncomfortably in the doorway, Mercy behind her.

“Ah, that’s better!” he said, walking towards her and eyeing the maid over her shoulder, “there was an accident with one of the glasses. Could you please have it cleaned up? We’ll have dinner now too, if you’ll let Alana know we’re ready for it.”

“Yes, sir.”

With a hand on Kieran’s shoulder, he steered her out of the room with Lillian following behind, and the young girl felt a lump rise in her throat as she went taut beneath his touch. She was confused by everything that was happening, with her new mother _ clearly _ finding her undesirable, and knew with absolute certainty that the raised voices had been concerning her. Yet, it seemed like she was here to stay as her new father pulled out a chair for her to the left of the head of the table.

Lillian sat to his right, and Kieran found herself staring fearfully into her green eyes, feeling small and coarse before her elegant refinement. Lex joined them a few moments later, immediately taking a seat beside Kieran, where the fourth place had been set. The plates were all gilt trimmed and fragile fine bone china. There were more knives and forks on either side of the plates and bowl before her than Kieran knew what to do with, and she swallowed thickly as she watched her new brother take his napkin and shake it out with a flourish, before setting it in his lap.

A man entered the room in a footman’s uniform, bringing a bucket with wine with him, which he set on the long table behind Lionel’s seat. White wine was poured one-handedly into the crystal glasses of the two adults, before four slender glasses were filled with water. Then dishes and dishes of food were brought up from the kitchens, and the man held platters out for them at their sides for them to serve themselves.

“Serve hers for her, Corben,” Lionel ordered the man as Kieran shrank back the first time he offered a dish up to her.

After that, the sandy-haired man dished it up for her, placing slivers of tender beef and roast potatoes on her plate. It made her think of Kara and the food she’d been given after the Children’s Aid Society had taken her in and her heart was sick with longing for her friend. This was all too surreal, and while Kieran had never felt so well cared for in her life, being waited on hand and foot, it was unnerving and she felt like the rug was about to be pulled out from under her.

“Your clothes look a little big for you, Kieran,” Lionel said as he picked up his cutlery, the young girl eyeing which ones he selected and following suit, “perhaps you can take her shopping, Lillian? Buy her some pretty dresses.”

Her new mother sat in stony-faced silence while they ate, the footman standing off to the side, waiting to be beckoned over to refill a glass or serve the next dish. She forced herself to eat slowly, taking small bites as her stomach growled with hunger, carefully cutting her food into pieces as she ate.

“Well, at least she’s not a complete savage,” Lillian sniffed halfway through the meal after observing the girl for a few moments.

“It’s nothing some tutoring won’t be able to fix,” Lionel cordially replied, reaching for his wine, “perhaps you can take an interest in that. I doubt you’ll want your daughter to slip up at a social event.”

“And I can teach you to play chess!” Lex chimed in, giving her a crooked smile as he cut a potato in half.

Feeling too many emotions to make sense of them, Kieran gave him a wan smile and reached for her glass of water. She cleared her plate of any food, eating more than perhaps she should’ve, but was too hungry to care about that. And then, much to her delight, there came caramel custard for dessert, sweet and creamy and more heavenly than anything Kieran had ever tasted before. 

She thanked the footman as he cleared her plates away, and then hesitantly thanked Lionel, who gave her an affectionate smile, before dabbing at his mouth and setting the napkin down on the table and climbing to his feet.

“I’ll take port in the parlour, Corben. Fetch Mercy to put Kieran to bed.”

Lillian scoffed at the name and walked out of the room with barely a glance reserved for her new daughter, her footsteps audible on the staircase a few moments later as she went upstairs.

“Boy, have you finished your schoolwork?”

Lex snapped to attention and gave his father a curt nod, “of course, father.”

“Good lad. How about a round of billiards before bedtime?”

Smiling, Lex nodded and eagerly rushed off to the parlour to set the game up, pausing to wish Kieran a goodnight before he vanished. As Lionel made his way out to the foyer, Kieran followed at his heels, and he rounded on her as she pulled up short, his size imposing as he looked down at her with a stern expression on his face.

Pausing a moment, he dropped to one knee in front of her and reached out to place a hand on her shoulder, a kind look in his dark eyes. “I know this is a big change for you, but your mother will come around. We’ll send you to school and get you some new pretty dresses and some dolls. You’ll fit right in.”

“Yes, sir.”

He chuckled quietly, “you can call me father, my dear.”

Fondly cupping the side of her face, he gave her a small smile, laced with sadness once more as he gave her a searching look, and then rose to his feet as the maid came in, smoothing out the fabric of her white apron, and sketched a quick curtsy. 

“Goodnight, Kieran.”

She bit her bottom lip slightly as she looked down at the marble inlaid floor. “Goodnight.”

Mercy pressed a hand against her back and guided her upstairs, leading her through the warren of lavish hallways and numerous doors, until she felt like she was lost inside the maze of a house. But then they came to a stop at the back of the south wing and a door was pushed open and light switched on to reveal a massive bedroom with pink wallpapered walls and high ceilings with delicate crown molding. 

There was a canopy bed made of dark wood, heavy silk covers in a rosy shade of pink with matching drapes, and an ornate armoire with a chest of drawers beside it. A row of bookshelves were built into the walls with intricate gold scrollwork, full of books on fairy tales, porcelain dolls and other items that seemed like they hadn’t been touched in a long while. A writing desk was set beneath a window overlooking the dark gardens beyond, and there were oil paintings of ballerinas and flowers on the walls.

With startling realisation, Kieran realised that it must’ve belonged to their daughter. A daughter that nobody had mentioned, but made perfect sense when she pieced together Lillian’s anger and Lionel’s sadness and unexpected adoption of her. She thought that she must’ve reminded him of her in some way when she’d bumped into him on the street.

As she took all of this in, Mercy closed the heavy curtains over the four windows and turned down the beds, helping Kieran out of her clothes and giving her what she assumed must be one of Lex’s nightshirts to wear. She didn’t own a nightdress herself, and the soft cotton shirt came down to her ankles. It smooth against her skin and she climbed into bed and let the woman tuck her in, finding that the bed was heated somehow, her toes toasty warm as she wriggled them beneath the heavy down comforter. 

“I’ll be back in a moment with supper for you, miss.”

Mercy left her sitting propped up against a stack of goose down pillows, the mattress soft, yet springy beneath her, and Kieran was struck with amazement at how quickly her own luck had changed. Just a few hours ago, she’d been running through the rain, escaping the prison of the neverending train journey, soaking wet and scared, and now she was in a _ mansion _, with servants and plumbing and heating, her stomach full for the first time in months, in the softest bed she’d ever been in, staring around at the belongings of a dead girl.

It was unnerving, but Kieran couldn’t complain. She couldn’t remember ever feeling more content in her life and felt her eyes burning with tiredness as she found herself safe - truly safe - and comfortable for the first time in years. There would be no chugging motion of the train, the coughing or snivelling of children, or even so much as the sound of a busy street outside her window tonight. It was like she’d slipped through a portal into a different world.

A few minutes later, the door opened again and Mercy entered with a silver tray in her hands, which she set down on the nightstand, plucking a cup of warm milk and a plate with a thick slice of fruit cake off it and leaving it for Kieran. With a quiet goodnight, Mercy made herself scarce, leaving a beautiful stained glass lamp in the pattern of pink and lavender flowers switched on and the lights turned out.

Slowly drinking the milk, feeling it pool in her stomach and radiate heat throughout her, Kieran picked at the warm cake on the plate in her lap, humming in appreciation, and thought about Kara. She wanted to tell her about her eventful day, about where she’d ended up so she could find her again. She wanted to know if her own family were treating her just as well, and said a silent prayer for her as she dusted off the crumbs and set the cup and plate on the end table. Switching the lamp out, she made herself comfortable, face buried into the soft pillows as she burrowed into the warmth of the bed, and thought of Kara until she drifted off to sleep, enveloped in the comforting knowledge of true safety.

* * *

As Kieran slept in the wide bed of the nursery in the mansion, on the west coast, Kara was hiding up in the hayloft, eyes red from crying, knuckles bruised from a caning, and she hid in the corner of the large stables with the smell of horses and manure and sweet hay. The row of stalled horses occasionally whickered as they shifted below her, and Kara sniffed and avoided going back to the while clapboard house a short way away.

She’d been there for a few weeks now with her new family, and Eliza and Jeremiah were kind to her, keeping her well-fed, sending her off to school in the town and asking nothing of her except to help out with chores. They even had an old upright piano made of scarred beech wood that she was allowed to play, much to the delight of Eliza. But she hated it there.

Her new sister didn’t like her, she kept getting caned at school for slipping into Russian, her English was so broken that she couldn’t even understand most of the lessons, and she had no friends. She’d already tried to run away multiple times, packing her meagre supplies into her suitcase and sneaking out past the Rottweiler, Krypto, curled up before the low-burning embers of the fire, and passing the bare, harvested fields closest to the house, before making herself comfortable in the roots of an old oak tree at the top of the gentle incline.

By sunrise, she’d make it back to the old farmhouse covered in grass stains and mud, shivering in her coat and quiet, Jeremiah sitting on the back porch steps, plucking a chicken as he waited for her to come back. He’d take her suitcase from her and take it back up to her bedroom, while Eliza plated up bacon and eggs and gave her a glass of milk as she sat in front of the fire. It was starting to get too cold to be sleeping outside now, even in California.

“Kara! Kara, come down now. It’s time for dinner.”

“I am not hungry,” she called back down, sighing softly at the sound of her new father’s voice.

He was patient and kind, and it made her miss her own father even more. Huddling in the corner of the hayloft, where she always hid when she cried, and had been hiding since running home from school with smarting knuckles earlier that afternoon, she turned her head towards the wood, back to the ladder. She heard him coming though, the heavy footsteps across the earthen floor of the stables, the panting of the farm dog at his heels.

At the sound of Jeremiah climbing the ladder up to the hayloft, Kara made herself smaller and avoided looking at him, until he was standing in the low space, stooped over, his wide-brimmed hat in his hand and the sleeves of his cotton shirt rolled up. 

“You know, you really ought to eat.”

“American food is … not good.”

Jeremiah chuckled as he crouched down near her, “I bet it’s a lot different to Russian food, huh?”

_ “Da.” _

“You don’t have chicken in Russia?”

Turning her head slightly toward him, Kara gave him a bewildered look, “chicken? Yes, there is chicken.”

“Well we’re having chicken tonight too. And potatoes. Do you like potatoes?”

“Yes, but-”

“Eliza made pie too,” he said, softly sighing with a wistful note in his voice, “apple with cinnamon. I bet she’s whipped up some cream for it too. She makes the best pie in town; _ I _wouldn’t miss it for the world. Well … I’d better be getting inside then. You’ll be okay out here with the horses?”

Putting his hat back down on his dark hair, he rose to his feet and made his way across the creaking timbers to climb back down the ladder, Krypto yapping at his heels as he shouldered a rifle and made his way out into the late afternoon. The sky was already rosy as the sun started to set, and Kara sat there for a moment, stomach growling before she slowly uncurled herself from the ball she’d been huddled in, and made her way towards the ladder.

Climbing down, she hopped onto the straw-covered floor, scattering a few chickens as she passed by the stalls of horses and ponies and racks of tack and barrels of feed, and stepped out into the cool air. In her coat and stockings, it wasn’t that cold, but there were grey clouds drifting across the sky and the air smelled like rain.

Hurrying across the yard, she made for the wrap-around porch with the shingled roof and her feet pounded up the back steps. Firewood, tools and galoshes cluttered the wooden porch and Kara pulled open the screen door and stepped into the kitchen. Wide white cupboards and counters filled the open space, the floor made from the same dark wood as the beams overhead, and she froze as Eliza rounded on her.

Her new mother wore a frilly apron and was standing at the clunky gas stove as she finished up dinner, her face softening with a kind smile as she eyed the young girl. “There you are! How about you wash up and help your sister lay the kitchen table?”

Silently nodding, Kara quickly stepped up to the wide farmhouse basin and washed her hands with a thick bar of soap before drying them and then shedding her coat. Eliza seized it as she tutted and eyed the dirt, before reaching out to pluck hay out of Kara’s blonde tresses. Letting the woman fuss over her for a moment while she shifted under the attention, Kara felt a pang of longing for her own mother.

Alura didn’t mend her clothes or teach her how to make biscuits and shell peas like Eliza did, or let her carry the big medical bag to the battered truck as her new mother drove into town to perform her duties as the local doctor, in between running the home, but Kara missed her all the same. Her mother had listened to her play piano and taught her how to embroider handkerchiefs, took her to buy pretty dresses and had played with her in the heavy snow, dressed up in their fur coats and mufflers.

Life on the farm was different, and Kara was half-convinced that her parents were still alive in Russia. She could go back to borscht and the baroque architecture of Saint Petersburg, visiting the Mariinsky Ballet company and walking the wide streets to stare in wonder at the colourful onion-shaped domes as they ate blini with jam inside. 

Instead, she was stuck in the middle of the warm late autumn weather of California, helping bake loaves of bread and feed chickens and pigs, watching Jeremiah ride out on the horses to herd cattle and sheep with Krypto at his heels. Farmhands helped with fixing the wheels on the old cart, oiling leather equipment and making sure the crops had all been harvested before winter. And school. School was the worst part of it all.

“Alex!” Eliza called out to her eldest, and Kara’s expression darkened as she watched her new sister make her way into the kitchen.

Long dark hair, and brown eyes that were always full of anger when trained on Kara, her sister always looked unkempt, her wool stockings torn at the knees, her hair dishevelled and clothes covered in dirt and oil from the engine of the truck she liked to tinker with. Perhaps most shockingly was the fact that when she was on the farm, she dressed in boys clothes, wearing shirts and pants tucked into goloshes. She was twelve, two years older than Kara, and for some inexplicable reason, disliked her new sister very much.

“Help your sister to set the table,” Eliza ordered her, pulling a glazed ham out of the oven. “Where did your father get to?”

“Just making sure the livestock are all shut in for the night. Buttercup got out again this morning.”

Eliza sighed as she shook her head, “that _ goat.” _

Pulling the drawer open hard enough to rattle the cutlery, Alex pulled out knives and forks and carried them over to the table, while Kara fetched the white and blue delftware dinner plates and set the table. A jug of lemonade was brought out of the refrigerator and four glasses were set on the table in the dining room. 

Soon enough, the four of them were sitting towards one end of the table, holding hands as Jeremiah said grace and Kara ignored it but silently sat through the prayer anyway. She missed going to temple and thought about how Hanukkah was quickly approaching and how her father would’ve lit the menorah and given Kara a new dreidel to play with. 

Sitting in silence, she stared down at her plate and waited as Jeremiah carved the ham and they all started helping themselves to food, passing dishes back and forth. Kara ate without complaint, having to admit that ham and potatoes weren’t _ awful _, as far as American food went. 

“How was school, girls?”

“Good,” Kara murmured, head ducked down as she tightened her grip on the knife and fork, knuckles still aching slightly.

“Vicki said you got a caning for speaking Russian again,” Alex quickly said.

Cheeks flaming, Kara kept her head down further as she cut up her ham, eyes stinging with tears. “Vicki is nasty girl.”

“Vicki is _ a _nasty girl,” Alex snarkily corrected her.

Head jerking up, Kara fixed her with a resentful look as embarrassment turned her cheeks rosy, and she found herself fighting back the urge to cry. “You _ know _ what I mean, Sasha.”

“How many times do I have to tell you? My name’s _ not _ Sasha.”

“In Russia is nickname for-”

“We’re not _ in _ Russia, _ comrade _,” Alex snapped, a scowl furrowing her brow as she met Kara’s eyes.

Sighing, Eliza set down her knife and fork and gave them both pointed looks. “Alex, please be kinder to your sister. It’s a difficult adjustment.”

“She’s _ not _ my sister.”

“No,” Kara quietly agreed, “I have no _ sestra. _ My family is in Russia and-”

“That’s _ enough _, girls,” Eliza firmly said, “Alex, if you’re finished with dinner, you can start on the dishes. Kara, how about you-”

Chair legs scraping on the wooden floor, Kara abruptly climbed to her feet, blue eyes shining with tears as her bottom lip trembled. “My name is _ Karina.” _

Without further ado, she ran from the room, blonde hair fanning out behind her as her patent shoes pounded on the floorboards and she pushed open the screen door, taking off through the fading afternoon. The sky was streaked violet and tall stalks of dew-covered grass soaked through the skirt of her dress as she ran towards a thicket of trees bordering on the right of the farm in the distance, separating them from the acres of land belonging to their neighbours.

Hot tears spilling down her cheeks, Kara ran through the trees, following the dip of the valley as she stumbled over tree roots and a bed of rotting leaves, her shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. There was no one around to hear her, too far away from anything in the small town, and she found herself angry and frustrated being in Midvale. 

It was one thing to be in National City with its crowded streets and countless orphans, banding together with strangers from all over the world, outsiders together, and then to be in the all-American farming town hours north of the state capital, where they all spoke the same and lived with their parents, they all had the names they were born with and spoke English and were used to the quiet lifestyle of farm life.

Rubbing at her face, Kara picked up a stick and batted plants and branches aside as she tramped through the woods, venting her frustration as the sky deepened to indigo and the first stars came out. The night had a chill to it, but to a girl raised in the deep snows of Russia, it could’ve been a mild summer’s evening, instead of the cusp of winter. She walked and walked until she was tired and a mewling sound broke the hushed sound of the evening.

It didn’t take her long to find what it was, and walking through the ghostly shadows of tree trunks, Kara soon found the starved body of a stray cat, with tiny bundles curled up against it. They were all still, except for one of them, and Kara breathlessly dropped to her knees and scooped it up, feeling the fragile bones and tremors wracking it out of fear. It was a kitten perhaps a few weeks old. Too young to be weaned and already orphaned, and Kara held it by the scruff of its neck as she looked up at it in the gloom of dusk.

She felt a sudden kinship with the small creature and tenderly cuddled it to her chest, stroking its soft fur as she murmured quietly in Russian. The kitten continued to cry, and with a spark of determination inside, Kara turned and hurried back through the trees and across the stretch of fields, before reaching the white house and cluster of barns, stables and sheds. The house looked ghostly in the night, a few windows lit up with yellow light, and she felt its beckoning call as she swiftly carried the kitten back to the welcoming warmth of the fireplace.

“Eliza! I have koshka. I found in trees!”

At the sound of her shouting as she pounded up the porch steps and let the screen door slam shut behind her, hurried footsteps came out of the sitting room, her mother’s face full of alarm and anxiety, before her shoulders dropped with relief. Jeremiah lurked behind her in the doorway a bewildered look on his face.

They didn’t scold her. As long as she always stayed on the farm, they let her have however much space she needed, and Jeremiah always called her in from the back porch when it was time for her to finish her homework and go to bed. Instead, Kara moved towards Eliza, who warily drew closer, cradling the kitten against her chest with a tender look on her face.

“Is cat, yes?”

“Yes,” Eliza slowly said.

“Can I keep it?”

Pausing for a moment, Eliza looked at Jeremiah, who shrugged, and Eliza sighed softly. Nodding towards the kitchen, she put an arm around Kara’s shoulders and guided her into the kitchen, flipping a lightswitch and bathing the big room in light. 

“It’s a lot of responsibility, taking care of an animal. Are you sure you’re going to look after it? A cat is useful on a farm, but it’s only a baby. It’s going to need to be cared for until it can look after itself.”

“Is like me,” Kara proclaimed, “is orphan too. I give it family. Like you and me.”

Expression softening, Eliza pouring some milk from a glass bottle into a bowl, and rummaged around in her medicine bag for a metal dropper with a rubber end. Kara sat down at the scrubbed kitchen table, the kitten soft and warm in her hands, and watched as Eliza set the bowl down on the table and filled the dropper with milk.

“Here. Give it to it slowly.”

Following the woman’s instructions, Kara slowly fed the kitten the bowl of milk, and its mewling stopped as its hunger was sated. In the light of the kitchen and the glow of the fire, Kara could see that its eyes were still closed, and its fur was jet black, streaked with charcoal.

“You’ll have to name it.”

“I will call you Polosatyy,” Kara said, raising the kitten to eye level as she smiled at it, nose wrinkling and eyes creasing at the corners beneath her bangs.

There was a scoff from the doorway and Kara turned in her chair to find Alex leaning against the doorframe, a condescending look on her face as she stared straight at Kara. “What kind of name is _ that?” _

“Is Russian for streaky. Like fur, see?”

“_ Streaky? _ God, that’s even worse in English.”

Drawing herself up in her seat, puffing her chest out slightly, Kara raised her chin as she ran her fingers over the fur of the kitten’s soft fur. “Teachers say I have to practice English. I will call Streaky then.”

With a glowering look, Alex made her way into the sitting room with Jeremiah in tow, while Kara nursed the cat in the warmth of the kitchen and Eliza heated milk on the stove. Then with stern words about finishing her homework, Eliza handed her two cups of hot cocoa, while Streaky was gently stowed in the pocket of Kara’s pinafore, and they joined Jeremiah and Alex in the sitting room. 

“Here, Aleksy,” Kara murmured, gently setting one of the mugs down on the coffee table, while Eliza handed Jeremiah a cup of coffee.

“Thank you,” her sister stiffly replied, before scratching away in a lined notebook with a pencil.

Fetching her own work, Kara drank her cocoa as Streaky curled up in a tiny ball in her lap, working away at mathematics equations that she finished quickly, needing no help with the numbers and symbols, which were the same as what she was taught in Russia. But when it came to English and history, Kara struggled, losing concentration and drawing idly in the margins of her book. Her penmanship was clumsy and childish for a ten year old, the letters shaky and unfamiliar to the Russian alphabet. Sometimes she slipped into the familiar letters, working quickly, until she realised her work was an incomprehensible mixture of both languages and frustratedly had to start again.

Eliza was patient and helped her though, and she tutored Kara with a battered copy of _ Anne of Green Gables _to help her improve her English and learn to read. It was a slow and difficult process, and she hadn’t made much progress over the past weeks, but it was a distraction to the circumstances of her life now.

A few hours after dusk, both girls were sent upstairs to bed, Alex kissing her father goodnight while Kara gave him a shy smile. This time, she took Streaky with her, slowly plodding upstairs, hand trailing the mahogany banister of the staircase, while she looked at the framed paintings of the countryside and photos of the family hanging on the white walls.

Upstairs, Kara set Streaky on the bedspread of the narrow bed in the room she shared with Alex. It was a spacious room, with a bed on either side, beneath windows, neat shelves full of books and toys, an old rocking chair and drawers and cupboards for their belongings. Her trunk had been stowed up on top of her cupboard, which now held a few new dresses of sturdy make, if not quite fashionable, and Kara fetched a soft nightdress and made her way to the bathroom at the end of the hall.

Dressing for bed, she brushed her teeth with the store-bought toothpaste that the Danvers were well off enough to afford, with Eliza be a respectable doctor, despite the fact that she was a woman. As homesick and full of grief as Kara was, she knew that she was lucky. She would never be starved, never want for anything, and was well-loved by the Danvers. Two of them anyway. They were amongst the wealthier occupants of Midvale, and she knew she could’ve been well worse off.

In her bedroom shared with her new sister, Kara climbed beneath the covers, finding a rubber hot water bottle nestled between the sheets. It was such a motherly gesture that it made a lump rise in Kara’s throat as she slid between the warm sheets, enveloped by heat and softness as she sat propped up against the pillows. Alex came in a few moments later, silent yet her displeasure rolling off her in waves, and then Eliza appeared in the doorway.

She hesitated a moment, before crossing over to Kara’s bed and settling down on the edge of the mattress, reaching out to push her hair out of her face as Kara peered up at her from beneath her bangs. Streaky was curled up in her lap, and Kara felt a fierce protectiveness toward the kitten.

“Tomorrow will be better,” Eliza gently assured her.

Kara nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat as she listened to the words her new mother had told her every night since they’d driven her home from the train station from a nearby city. Things weren’t as worse as they’d been, but Kara wouldn’t say they were any better.

“Are you going to run away again tonight?” the woman wearily asked, a small smile curling her mouth.

Shrugging slightly, Kara twisted the edge of the sheets in her hands. “Perhaps.”

Gently cupping her cheek in a warm hand, Eliza’s smile grew and her eyes sparkled slightly. “Well … make sure you’re back before breakfast.”

A quiet laugh of surprise fell from Kara’s lips and she begrudgingly allowed herself a quick smile as she stared up at Eliza, her hand falling from Kara’s cheek as she rose to her feet. Crossing the room, she pressed a kiss to the top of her daughter’s head and pulled the blankets up slightly, before she bade them both goodnight and switched the lights out.

With the kitten curled up beside her, Kara made herself comfortable in the narrow bed and thought about Kieran. Her mind was constantly plagued with questions about the Irish girl, wondering where she was, if she’d found a new family too, if she had new siblings and if they were kind to her. With a tired sigh, she pressed her face into the pillow and drifted off to sleep thinking of her friend.


	4. Chapter 4

Things slowly became more bearable for Kara as time slipped by. Her broken English became more fluent, even if it was still riddled with holes, and she was less likely to slip into Russian - usually only out of frustration, or when she talked to the cat that trailed her everywhere on the farm. She stopped trying to run away and helped out on the farm more, tossing handfuls of feed over the ground for the chickens, helping Jeremiah brush down the horses in the stables, finding the smell of the hay and leather and wood comforting from all the time she’d hidden in the stables to avoid her new family. Even the pigs weren’t quite so dirty to her as she emptied buckets of food scraps into their troughs, nose wrinkling at their grunting and mud-splattered coarse hides.

On Sunday’s she accompanied the Danvers’ to church, obediently sitting quietly beside them, finding the hymns soothing, even if she didn’t sing along. One thing she was grateful for was the fact that they never tried to change her. Not once was she forced to abandon her faith, or change her name - although they only ever called her by her nickname - and even when Jeremiah butchered the pigs for sausages and bacon, Eliza never set a piece of pork on Kara’s plate when they ate. 

They just let her be, coaxing her out of her shell as she wrestled with her grief, trying to come to terms with this new life of hard work and gratitude for small fortunes. It was different and foreign, but the kindness the Danvers’ had shown by taking her in hadn’t gone unappreciated by the Russian girl, despite her difficulties adjusting. Slowly, but surely, she grew used to it.

She grew used to the stretch of fields, bare from the harvests and snow-free, even deep in December when it would’ve been blanketed up to her waist if she’d been back in her homeland. The smell of horses and hay and oiled leather became a constant odour clinging to her darned clothes, and herbs drying in the kitchen as she scrubbed pots and pans, or rolled dough for pies, slowly became part of her everyday life. Even her sister, who studiously ignored her, became habitual. Life plodded along, and Kara went with it.

School was still trying, although most of the children were content to leave her alone, and she came home afterwards with fewer red knuckles smarting from the cane. Still, she longed for the cold, for a  _ real _ winter, with borscht and fur hats and coal fires, for her mother humming as she brushed her hair for her, and her father’s kind face as he helped her with her maths. No matter how used to the Danvers she grew, how much of a family they felt like, there was always the haunting memories of her family and her past life at the back of her mind.

Christmas approached quickly, and with it, a reprieve from the monotonous drudge of schoolwork, and although Kara had never celebrated Christmas before, she was wholeheartedly enthusiastic about a break from class and homework. Eliza was busier than ever with accidents from the rains that made roads slippery or caused boggy patches on the dirt tracks between farms, more than one injury caused by a car or wagon stuck in the mud, but she still had time to teach Kara how to bake cookies and glaze a turkey for the holidays.

Despite her beliefs, Kara found peace in decorating the house in reds and greens, drinking eggnog by the fire at night and everyone singing carols at church. The hymns were comforting, reminding her of home, where choirs would stand on the slushy streets of Saint Petersburg singing with their frost-bitten cheeks, hands buried in furry mufflers as they collected donations for the poor. And she enjoyed the trek that Jeremiah took her and Alex on, up through the sprawling fields until they found a crop of evergreen trees, helping pick out one for him to fell and helping wrap ribbon and baubles around it. There was something to be said for Christmas and it's time of cheer, and it was the closest she’d come to happiness since arriving in Midvale.

It didn’t stop her from thinking about Kieran though. Had she ever found her forever home? Had she been taken back to National City on an empty train, turned out onto the streets for her sullen attitude, or placed back in an orphanage to wait out the holidays and the turn of the year, before embarking on another trip across the States, holding out hope that this time would be the time? Had she run off and found refuge in the gutters of a foreign city, someplace south and warm, or freezing around a drum barrel holding a small flickering flame to ward off the frost? The thought of not knowing her fate followed Kara everywhere she went.

She wondered as she sat on the back porch in the late December frosts if Kieran had woken to presents on Christmas Day from her new family, like Kara had, with new dresses and books and ribbons for her hair. She wondered what her name would be if that was the case. Kara knew an Irish name would never stick, no matter who adopted her, and she prayed at night that her friend was happy and loved, and missed her as painfully as she missed her parents.

Still, time carried on, dragging her with it, and as the new year rolled in Kara found herself back in the clapboard school nestled amongst a copse of trees in town, learning American history and wishing for snow. Kara wished that Kieran was with her then, lending her friendship and companionship, giving her at least  _ one _ person who liked her. For all her trying, Alex just didn’t like her new sister, shooting her dark looks of accusation, abandoning Kara to long, solitary walks home from school, studiously ignoring her around the farm as they did chores together, or else lashing out to blame her for milking the cows wrong, or not rubbing the horses down properly. 

Kara didn’t know what else to do except ignore it, or else lash out in return as her eyes stung with wounded tears, feeling unjustly chastened for things she hadn’t done. Eliza tried her best to keep them both in check, but still, they were both growing girls, hormones raging and tempers short, and she couldn’t act as a buffer all the time. 

They argued in the mornings when Kara beat Alex to the bathroom, the water bitterly cold as it hadn’t had time to heat up yet, her sister pounding on the door until it shook in its frame, while Kara smiled to herself and took some satisfaction in that. They argued when Alex locked their shared bedroom from the inside, Kara angrily shouting in Russian about how she needed to do her homework, or when they did chores, bickering over who had to muck out the stalls with the other farmhand while the other got to feed the animals and collect the eggs the chickens had laid. 

The worst was when Alex corrected her grammar, the snide comments make Kara bristle with frustration and embarrassment. She was trying her best, trying not to speak in Russian so that she could fit in, round off the edges of her accent and understand school better, but it was slow progress, and she hated the way that Alex seized any mistakes with glee, unable to help herself out of some bizarre dislike for Kara that the blonde couldn’t seem to figure out. Was it the fact that she was no longer an only child? The fact that she was so different? That her mother taught Kara how to bake, while Alex sulked over the engine of the beat-up truck outside. Or that Jeremiah was endlessly patient with Kara and her childish outbursts, letting her get away with things that Alex couldn’t.

Things had settled down as January came to a close, Kara finding things smoother with her new life, finding comfort in the endless repetition of her days, with school and chores and homework, weekends spent roaming the fields until she came back muddy with fistfuls of the first wildflowers of the year. Streaky followed her everywhere like a little black shadow, purring as he wound around Kara’s legs as she read on the back porch, and that was just one more thing that Alex hated her for.

It was the one rough patch that she hadn’t been able to navigate, even after months, and Kara was tired and prickly whenever Alex spoke to her, none more so than when she struggled through her homework in the living room, Eliza gently helping her while Alex made snarky comments, already finished with her own.

“Have you done your reading for English?” her mother asked one evening, darning the heels of Jeremiah’s socks.

“No,” she sheepishly admitted, eyeing the battered copy of  _ Anne of Green Gables _ , well worn from the dozens of times that it had been read before her, and she brooded with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Well go on then,” Eliza urged, raising her eyebrows as she smiled softly.

Suppressing a sigh, Kara reached for the book, fingers running over the peeling bottom of the spine, letting the yellowed page's part to where she’d been reading. She enjoyed the story, if not the actual process of learning to read it, and found so many similarities between herself and Anne, down to the small farming town and the hope that a boy would be brought home. Except Anne had never had to deal with nasty sisters who felt snubbed by her parents’ lack of attention. Finding where she’d left off, Kara began in an uncertain voice, slow and faltering as she followed the lines of black text along with her finger.

“I am sure we should not shut our hu- hearts against healing … influ- influences that nature offers us. But understand your- your feeling. I think we all ex- expe- …” 

“Experience,” Jeremiah read as he leant forward to read the word that Kara pointed at as she thrust the book up at him.

“Experience same thing. We …”

“Experience  _ the _ same thing,” Alex snorted, face lit up with amusement and a patronising look as she smiled slightly.

Cheeks flushing red with embarrassment, Kara slammed the book shut and scowled at her sister, eyes stinging with the urge to cry. Bristling, Kara went taut at the sound of her sister’s derisive laughter, and tossed the book aside, climbing to her feet as she balled her hands into fists.

“I am  _ not _ stupid, Aleksy!” Kara snapped, temper flaring, “you think I am not smart? I am  _ very _ smart in Russian. I speak three languages. How many you speak, huh? You are much smarter than me, da? I am still smart, even in bad English. And you are mean in good English.”

She poked her tongue out and then stormed from the room, golden hair whipping around her shoulders as she fled quickly, her throat closing up as a pressure built behind her eyes. Feet pounding on the wooden stairs, she went up to her shared bedroom and slammed the door behind her as hot tears started to spill down her cheeks. 

Wiping furiously at her eyes, Kara drew in a deep, shuddering breath and looked at the black ball of fur curled up on top of her sheets. Exhaling forcefully, shoulders drooping, she walked over to her bed and dropped down beside the cat, running her fingers over the soft, dappled fur, taking in the faint streaks of grey that she’d named him for.

“At least you’re nice to me,” Kara mumbled in Russian, letting out a choked laugh as the cat pushed its nose into her palm, a deep purr rumbling inside it before it mewled quietly.

Alex came up shortly afterwards, not meeting her sister’s bloodshot eyes, and dumped Kara’s schoolwork on the end table beside her bed. Already dressed for bed and beneath the blankets, Kara was absentmindedly stroking Streaky’s fur and studiously ignoring her sister as she got herself ready for bed.

Eliza poked her head in a few minutes afterwards, her anxious blue eyes landing on Kara, who had her head ducked down, before she stepped into the room and crossed over to her. Smoothing her hand over Kara’s blonde hair, she cupped her chin and urged her head up, giving her a soft smile.

“Tomorrow is a new day, honey. We’ll try again then,” she gently told her.

Swallowing thickly as Eliza placed a featherlight kiss to her forehead, Kara pulled the blankets up to her chest and nodded. Of course she’d try again; there was no other option for her. Her life objectively wasn’t bad, it was  _ good _ even, and she was grateful for her mother’s optimism, but that didn’t change the fact that she was grieving and miserable and it wasn’t anything Eliza could fix in a hurry.

Eliza quietly bid goodnight to her other daughter, before flipping the light switch and plunging them into darkness. Laying in bed, Kara stared at the sliver of silver moonlight that seeped in through a gap in the curtains, feeling the heavy press of sadness on her chest, even as the scraggly kitten purred contently beneath her fingertips, so reliant on Kara, making her feel useful for something. 

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” came Alex’s soft whisper after a few minutes.

Kara shifted on her mattress, turning to look across the dark room at the shadowed lump beneath the blankets. Surprise flitted across her face at her sister’s words, and she pushed herself up slightly, springs groaning before Alex continued.

“I just don’t particularly like you.”

* * *

The speed at which Kieran’s life turned around was enough to give her whiplash. She went from an orphan eating meagre scraps fed to her on the train as she grew more and more desperate with each stop, sitting in dirty clothes, unwashed and hopeless, to living on one of the biggest estates in Metropolis. Each morning she had a bath we rose water and sweet soaps, had a maid make her bed for her, had dinner served to her quite literally on a silver platter - as much as she wanted - and had everything she wanted at her beck and call.

Lionel was a big shot bank owner across the States, fingers in the pockets of everyone who was anyone in Metropolis. He spent most of his time at work in the bank that Kieran had first bumped into him outside of, wading through business meetings and paperwork, and came home late - if at all - tucking his new daughter into bed after a glass of whiskey.

Usually, it was just her, Lex and Lillian, her brother taking to her immediately, while her new mother was mostly silent. Lillian would just sit there and look at her most of the time, an unreadable expression on her face that made Kieran feel small, and she wasn’t quite sure whether her new mother liked her or not. At times it felt like perhaps Lillian was just unused to the idea of having a new daughter, but then there were other times when she’d look at Kieran with a pinched look on her face, her green eyes cold, and she’d get the sinking feeling that it wasn’t anything she’d done, but her mere presence that offended the woman.

Still, she was quickly enrolled into a prestigious private school for young girls, finding herself wearing the tailored blazer and knee-high socks of her new uniform, out of the house eight hours a day, which gave her a reprieve from her new mother’s disapproving stares. She took violin lessons and learned Latin, French and German, a governess coming to the sprawling mansion afterwards to teach her etiquette until she could sit like a lady and recite poetry off the top of her head. Despite her reservations, Lillian took her to have a tailored wardrobe made for her, dresses of soft velvet in maroon, emerald green and deep plum. Cashmere cardigans and pleated skirts, patent shoes polished to a shine, and lace-trimmed blouses. Kieran didn’t want for a single thing.

Her brother taught her to play chess, and she was shown off at dinner parties by Lionel, when he was home to attend them, which wasn’t often, smiling prettily for businessmen as she quietly stood on display. Her bedroom was filled with new china dolls to play with, and Lillian brusquely taught her how to embroider handkerchiefs, casting her furtive glances that Kieran always caught, making her feel timid beneath the scrutinising stare of her disapproving mother. 

Yet, when she caught Kieran fingers the old pewter cross around her neck one day, Lillian surprisingly had it cast in gold and transferred onto a fine chain, after brusquely asking her daughter what it was. It made Kieran pause for a moment, wondering if perhaps her new mother was distant out of her grief for the daughter she’d lost. She’d never asked, but she’d gleaned enough to know that Lena would’ve been about her age, perhaps had even resembled her slightly, and she wondered if perhaps her mother hadn’t always been so cold and aloof. She wasn’t with Lex.

Still, the biggest change came weeks later, right before Christmas, when the streets of Metropolis were slick with ice and a fine dusting of snow coated everything. The mansion smelled of pine and cinnamon, a dozen trees spread throughout the house, laden with tinsel and decorations, boughs of holly on the carved mantle pieces and carved figurines from the nativity set out on display.

“Kieran,” her father said, setting his whiskey down one evening as they all lounged around one of the house’s many sitting rooms, spending family time together, which was a rare occurrence. “Your mother and I have been thinking, and it’s time we ought to change your name.”

“My name?” she hesitantly asked a look of surprise on her pale face, green eyes so serious for a young child. 

Her name was one of the few things she had left of her old life. That and her necklace. Everything else was gone, except for the memories of Kara. She’d clung to it desperately at the beginning, reminding herself of where she came from, of her Irish roots, but it was to be expected. In fact, she was surprised someone as haughty as her new mother hadn’t immediately stripped her of it like she had the second-hand clothes Kieran had brought into the house with her. 

“You know how much our Lena meant to us,” her father continued, giving her a strained smile, full of love and grief, “and how much you mean to us too. You’re our daughter now, and we’d like to give you her name.”

Glancing at Lillian, taking in the rigid posture, the muscle jumping in her jaw and the flat line of her lips, head turned aside as she closed her eyes and braced herself against whatever painful memories played in her mind. There was no mistaking Lillian’s quiet outrage and objection to the idea of Kieran taking her dead daughter’s name, yet she was silent as the girl sat there in surprise, a lump lodged in her throat.

“Lena?”

“Lena Kieran Luthor,” Lionel drawled, “it has a nice ring to it, don’t you agree, dear?”

His last words were directed toward Lillian, who sniffed and then cleared her throat, eyes snapping open to give her daughter a sidewards look. “If you think so.”

“It’s settled then,” Lionel said, a beaming smile on his face, although his eyes were flat and flashed a warning at his wife as he stared at her for a moment before his attention shifted to Lena. “Well, off to bed with you, pet.”

She let him dote on her, kissing his cheek as he hugged her, and gave him a bright smile, before she turned somewhat hesitantly on her mother and bid her goodnight too, along with Lex. Mercy led her upstairs, a cup of hot cocoa already waiting on the nightstand with a golden mince pie, and Lena slipped into bed, heated and soft, and bid the maid goodnight as she sat in the warmth of lamplight, reading passages from an old book written in Russian that she’d selected from the library downstairs. 

It made her feel closer to Kara, and as winter closed in, Lena couldn’t help but think about her more. She was on the west coast, probably enjoying a milder climate on a farm somewhere, and she couldn’t help but wonder if she wished for the snowy streets of Metropolis, the grey skies and rainy days and bitter cold as everyone walked about in thick woollen coats and knitted scarves. Did she miss the Russian winters? Did she think of Lena as much as Lena thought about her? Was she excited for Christmas, even though she was Jewish? Was she even allowed to practice her faith now, with a new family?

There was so much she didn’t know, and on Christmas morning, when she woke to hot cocoa and a stack of endless pancakes with sweet maple syrup, to a stack of wrapped gifts so high it nearly obscured the decorated pine tree in the living room, an endless stream of dresses, shoes, coats and ribbons, books and dolls, pencils to sketch with and coloured thread for embroidering, the only gift that Lena really wanted was to know how her friend was. 

It haunted her for months, all through January and its bitter days, taking tea with her mother’s friends as they doted on her in the presence of the stoic woman, expressing how lovely it must be for Lillian to have a daughter of her own. She prayed she’d see Kara again when she attended the Luthor’s Protestant church in her Sunday best, keeping her gold cast Claddagh cross tucked safely beneath the collar of her pressed dress. 

When February came, she asked her mother if she could take Russian lessons, and despite Lillian’s tittering a tutor was hired for her, on top of her other tutors, and she soaked up the language as she did with everything else, feeling like she was carrying her friend with her in her chest whenever she learned a new word. Sometimes, in the quiet of night when she had trouble sleeping in the room of a dead girl, in a bed that felt too grand with a life that felt like a dream waiting to be snatched away from her at the light of day, she’d hold silent conversations with Kara in her mind in Russian, feeling proud of herself as she stumbled over the pronunciation. It was a comfort though, something that felt familiar, and she would find herself drifting off into a peaceful sleep.

Still, time wore on, winter giving way to spring, the countryside bursting to life with colourful flowers that painted the estate’s gardens in a rainbow, the water just a stone’s throw away sparkling blue in the weak sunshine, and Lena’s new life became busy. She found herself swept up in private lessons, luncheons dressed in white lace, trips to the movies with Lex and shopping sprees with Lillian, her mother hauling her along by her hand with impatience as Lena stopped to stare at luxury things she’d never even seen before, while Lillian splurged on diamonds and dresses and hats like it was spare change. Soon enough, Lena didn’t have much time to think about Kara, too busy settling into her new life. There were always those late-night conversations though, and she clung to them with the childish hope that she’d see her friend again. One day.


	5. Chapter 5

The years slipped by, seasons changing while life carried on its monotonous march, and suddenly Kara was thirteen. Still tall for her age, all elbows and knees and hair that always seemed to be a mess and clothes that were always stained from grass or mud from tramping around outdoors or food from her exuberant attempts at helping Eliza cook. Her accent was rounded out now, the Russian fading to just a slight inflexion on some words, while her was English almost perfect and getting better by the day.

She still hated school, of course, enduring the lessons in history and science, and only really showing potential in math, yet Kara had settled into her new life until she could almost forget her old one. Every day, she seemed to forget her parents’ faces a little more, finding it hard to recall the softness of her mother’s voice as she sang her Russian lullabies, or the sound of her father’s rumbling laughter fading away. The bite of snowdrifts that came up to her waist and left her frozen to her core were forgotten in exchange for balmy summers that left her tanned and freckled, and the well-to-do lifestyle of Russia’s high society became a thing of the past, a distant thought as Kara raced around in her modest clothes, suitable for farms and the chores expected of her.

And with her acclimatisation to Midvale and all it had to offer came friends. Or rather  _ one _ friend - a boy named Kenny, in her year at school - and although Kara still didn’t get along with her sister, even years later, it didn’t sting as much when Kenny moved to town. They spent summers running wild through the open countryside, sent off by their mother’s with packed lunches of sandwiches and apples, climbing trees and collecting tadpoles in mason jars down by the creek. In the winter that Kenny had broken his leg, Kara learnt how to play checkers, keeping him company as they read  _ Felix The Cat _ comic strips in the newspapers and she shocked his mother by adding a dollop of strawberry jam to her cup of tea, a habit from an old life that she hadn’t managed to break.

It was a comfortable life, and Kara had come to appreciate it, instead of resenting the fact that she had a second chance. She spent less time sulking in the stables and more time shelling peas at the large kitchen sink, covered in white paint as she helped Jeremiah give the clapboard house a fresh coat, and after her thirteenth birthday, celebrated the day she was adopted by the Danvers’, soon became used to the familiar scent of gunpowder clinging to her clothes and hands as her adoptive father taught her how to shoot, while Alex hung back with a stormy look on her face, wearing plaid boy’s clothes as she held her own rifle slung over one shoulder. 

Despite their prickly relationship, even things with Alex became less hostile, for a while. They walked to school together, and home again, they did their homework at the kitchen table, Kara triumphantly helping her with her calculus when her older sister got stuck. They completed their chores side by side sometimes, if it was a big job, and were squashed side by side in the pews at church on Sunday’s. It was an uneasy sisterhood, neither of them ever far from snapping at each other, but they coexisted in tense silence, for the most part, going about their lives as if the other wasn’t there, exchanging as few words as possible and only when necessary.

Until the warm day just before Kara turned fourteen, deep into harvesting the crops for that year, the pigs fattened for butchering, the fields a gold undulating wave as the barley and wheat that hadn’t been harvested yet swayed in the breeze. The cattle were enclosed in one of the paddocks, calves born that spring nestled up against their mother’s, and Krypto dozed in the sunshine on the back porch as Kara finished her reading for English. Alex was tinkering with the engine of the battered truck, covered in grease as per usual, and Jeremiah was working the fields with the boy they hired to help out around the place. If they had brought home a son instead of Kara, she would’ve been out there in his place, the back of her neck reddening beneath the sun as she pulled up potatoes and carrots, or cut down corn and wheat. 

Instead, she was free to do what she pleased in the warmth of the mid-September heat. She played the piano inside in the shade, trailed a string of wool across the floor for Streaky to pounce at and spent some time sneaking lumps of sugar to the horses as she brushed down their coats. It was with the lazy demeanour of someone who knew they had no cares in the world that Kara would sprawl on the back porch with her books, drinking ice tea and waiting for Eliza to come home so she could help with dinner. Although, Kara was almost getting good enough to be trusted to start it before her mother came home now. She’d already peeled potatoes in a pot of water and set bread dough to rise in the warmth of the kitchen and was content to bask in the heat and wait.

Afterwards, she would blame herself, much as Alex did. Kara would scold herself for not doing more around the farm, although she didn’t think she’d be much help pulling up vegetables and cutting down corn anyway. She didn’t even know where to begin, had never been prompted to take on those duties when she’d joined the family, even though the Danvers’ had been looking for a boy for that exact purpose. Perhaps if she’d been more eager to help, had pressed them to show her the correct way to cut wheat and plant seeds and everything else needed to keep the farm running season after season, things would’ve turned out differently.

As it was, it didn’t turn out differently, and Kara was turning the page of her books when there was a panicked shout from the farmhand out in the fields. He was a small black dot against the blue sky and sunshine that lit him from behind, growing bigger as he raced through the waves of grain. A solitary figure, although Jeremiah had been there right alongside him only minutes before.

“You need to get help!” the farmhand shouted as he reached the edge of the fields, running across the bare ground of the backyard. 

Chickens scattered in his wake and Kara sat up straight, brow creasing with bewilderment. Even Alex had stopped her fiddling with the engine, a greasy rag in her hand as she set a wrench down.

“Where’s Doctor Danvers? He needs a doctor,” the boy called out, breathing heavily as he neared the back porch, hands on his knees as he pants.

“What’s wrong?” Alex called out, a wary look on her face as she glanced out at the empty fields.

“It’s Mr Danvers- your dad. One second he was fine and then- well, he collapsed. I think he needs a doctor.”

A jolt of panic ran through both girls, and Kara glanced back at the empty house with unease, while Alex took off towards the fields, tearing up a cloud of dirt in her frantic dash. Kara raced after her, faster and just as tall, quickly catching up to her, her book forgotten on the back steps. The farmhand was left catching his breath.

It took them a few minutes to reach the prone figure lying on the ground, a sheen of sweat covering his grey face as he breathed shallowly, one hand limply on his chest, right over his heart. Jeremiah was still alive, that much was clear, but it didn’t look good. Kara’s face was pinched with fear, hands clammy as she balled them into fists in her lap, kneeling in the tilled earth beside her father’s body, while Alex’s hands anxiously fluttered over him.

“We need mom,” Kara said in a small voice, the words coming out shaky.

“You stay with him,” Alex said, fluidly rising to her feet, the knees of her trousers covered in dirt and her hands caked in grease. As Kara’s mouth opened to protest, to insist that she go with her, that she didn’t know what she was supposed to do to help him, Alex gave her a sharp look that broached no argument. 

_ “Stay _ , comrade,” she snapped, prickly and frightened, even if she was trying to act like she wasn’t.

Kara was silent as she pressed two fingers to her father’s fluttering pulse, weak and rapid like the beat of a bird’s wings, and she shaded her eyes with her other hand as she craned her head over her shoulders and watched her sister run as fast as she could for the beat-up truck with its rusted fender and peeling paint.

It took several minutes for the engine to cough to a sputtering start, a plume of black smoke shooting out of the exhaust, and then Alex was tearing out of the farm in a hurry, wheels kicking up dirt and shredding grass as she went off in search of Eliza. Their mother was making a few house calls in town, doling out medicine for a late summer flu that was spreading through the citizens of Midvale, as well as making a stop at the local clinic where a few patients were up on bed rest, mostly for farming-related accidents. They had no clue where she was, and it seemed that Alex was relying on the rattling truck to roam the streets of the small town and hope that she caught sight of the doctor.

Kara was grey-faced with fear, her stomach roiling with nausea as she propped her father’s head in her lap and shaded her eyes as she waited for the truck to pull back into the end of the driveway with its rattling engine audible of the sound of the wind rustling the fields. Jeremiah was still and cool, except where the sun beat down on his pasty face, and she found herself singing quietly in Russian, a lullaby she’d almost forgotten, as she tried to calm her nerves, reassuring herself that it would be okay.

Help was a long time coming, the sun shifting overhead, on its way downwards to the horizon as midday vanished. It grew ever so slightly cooler and Kara’s arms prickled with goosebumps as the wind tore through the fields. The farmhand had come back shortly after Alex had vanished in the truck, standing at Kara’s side with calloused hands running through his hair in worry, slightly sunburned as sweat soaked through his shirt. He looked as bad as Kara felt, panicked and helpless, neither of them trying to move the bulky man laid out in the dirt. As tall as Kara was, even she didn’t think that her wiry muscles would be much help shifting Jeremiah inside, out of the harsh sunshine. Instead, they waited.

The better part of an hour came and went before the quiet rumble of the truck first made itself heard, steadily growing louder. It came to a grinding halt a short ways from the edge of the fields, gouging tire marks in the soft mud, and Alex had barely killed the loud engine before she was bolting out of the cab, with Eliza hurrying out of the other side, black medicine bag clutched tightly in her hand.

Alex beat her mother to the trio in the midst of the fields, collapsing to her knees as she reached out a trembling hand to check her father’s pulse, although she surely knew he was alive from the lack of tears on Kara’s face. Although, not for the lack of urge to cry. Eliza was there shortly after her, frazzled and panicked, lines of worry on her face as she dropped her bag heavily to the ground. 

In short order, she had the farmhand running to their neighbours for help moving him, had Kara fetching a bowl of cold water from the kitchen, with a few cloths, and Alex stubbornly refusing to leave his side as Eliza unbuttoned the top of his shirt and pressed the stethoscope to her chest. It was agonisingly slow, waiting for things to proceed, and Kara paced the earth flat in one patch, filled with the shaky hollowness of terrible worry. 

A burly man and his son from a farm nearby came and helped carry Jeremiah inside twenty minutes later, his skin looking even more ghastly in the yellow lights of the living room. Both girls were banned from entering as Eliza dribbled water, cloudy with some sort of medicine, into his mouth and checked his blood pressure. Kara went to the stables, seeking refuge in the furthest corner from the house, the smell of hay and horses familiar in a comforting manner, while Alex lurked about on the back porch.

The farmer and his son stayed, helping around the house as they waited to be made useful. Eventually, they moved him to the bed of the truck and drove him to the hospital, with Eliza beside him, giving the girls feeble instructions to finish their homework and make themselves something for dinner. She didn’t know when she’d be back.

The sisters were quiet and brooding, and Kara tried her best, making them both sandwiches with yesterday’s bread and leftover cold cuts of chicken, as well as steaming mugs of tea. Despite the heat, she lit a fire in the ashes of the kitchen’s grate and sat beside Krypto, stroking his fur in a calming manner that helped soothe her too, while Alex sat sullenly at the table, shoulders tense with worry. 

Outside, the sky grew steadily darker, from periwinkle to indigo, a smattering of stars brightening up the velvety darkness of the quiet night, and the clock was ticking towards midnight when the sound of the truck could be heard in the distant. Both girls straightened up, suddenly alert and tense, and Alex was on her feet a moment before Kara, listening to the sound of the silence that ensued after the engine cut off. They made their way into the wide hallway, listening to the heavy footsteps on the front porch, their faces in shadow as the door was opened and Eliza stepped inside.

There was a momentary pause as she let her bag thump to the floor, easing the door shut behind her and flipping the lights on before realisation dawned on the girls’ faces. The sight of bloodshot eyes and the etchings of grief were familiar to Kara and tears sprang unbidden to her eyes as Eliza drew in a shaky breath, readying herself to speak aloud what they already knew.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathlessly said, sagging as the rest of the air in her lungs was forced out.

“No,” Alex said, her voice thick with emotion as she stood rigidly in the middle of the hallway. “No. You’re wrong.”

“Alex-”

“This is all your fault!” Alex shouted as she rounded on Kara, cheeks flushed red with anger as her eyes shone with tears. “If you- if you’d been a boy like they wanted-”

She cut off, drawing in a shuddering breath as she clenched her hands into fists, trembling lips pressed together as she tried not to cry. Kara had never seen so much hatred in them, shrinking back from the fury with the flinching pain that Alex was right. A lump lodged itself in Kara’s throat, leaving her speechless and hollow as her mouth opened and closed, bottom lip wobbling with the urge to cry. It was building behind her eyes, and Kara dug the heel of one hand into her eye socket as she drew in a sharp, shaky breath, filling her lungs as if she was about to scream. 

Scream that it was her fault. All her fault. If she’d been a boy, the farmhand they’d intended to pick that day, her new father would still be alive. Instead, he was dead like her other one, both of them gone from one moment to the next. Kara felt a sharp pain in her chest as a sob bubbled up, getting caught in her throat and refusing to make it the rest of the way up and make itself heard.

“Don’t say that,” Eliza sharply scolded Alex, her voice stable and laced with anger, “this is no one’s fault.”

Her face was drawn and pale, dark shadows beneath her eyes and her shoulders slumped with fresh grief. Kara wanted to wrap her arms around her and bury her face in her shoulder, seeking the gentle embrace of a mother as she sobbed into the cotton of Eliza’s shirt. 

“He shouldn’t have been out there! It was supposed to be someone else!” Alex retorted.

The muscles in her jaw were taut as she ground her teeth together, trying her hardest not to fall apart. At sixteen, she believed herself grown, and jerked her chin up in a stubborn gesture as her chin trembled, making her look all the more younger, despite her efforts. Her hands were still covered in oil and Kara’s mouth was dry as she looked at her clenched fists, knowing her sister wanted to break something, break  _ her _ if she could. Kara was almost afraid that she would for a brief moment, saw the idea lurking in the depths of Alex’s dark eyes, so much like her father’s. She would break Kara’s nose in an instant if she thought it would make her feel better.

“Your father- he had a bad heart. It was nobody’s fault,” Eliza said, her voice faint and defeated, weary and sad as she raised a trembling hand to her forehead, eyes closing as she pressed the heel of it against her temple, eyelids fluttering closed. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault, do you hear me?”

At the unfamiliar frailty of her mother, Alex’s expression went slack, her whole body seeming to sag as her rage dissipated and her hands slowly uncurled from the white-knuckled fists. Kara swallowed thickly as she peered at her sister and her mother, head ducked down as she couldn’t quite bring herself to look properly, and watched as Eliza reached out for Alex. Her fingertips  _ just _ ghosted the shoulder of her daughter’s plaid shirt, before Alex was gone, her feet pounding on the floor before the screen door squeaked open and slammed shut.

Everything was different after that. Alex wouldn’t so much as acknowledge her existence afterwards as if she truly believed that Kara was to blame for Jeremiah’s heart attack. They had to work harder to keep the farm running, too much work for the farmhand to take care of alone, and with Eliza’s wages as a doctor, they managed to hire a few local boys to lend a hand on the weekend. Even their neighbours pitched in, taking cuts of the profits for their hard work harvesting the crops. Alex herded the cattle on the weekends, while Kara took care of menial tasks closer to the house. Anything to ensure they didn’t lose their home.

It was difficult, and they keenly felt Jeremiah’s loss in the middle of the house. Alex wore his old coat in the winter and rolled the sleeves up on his plaid shirts, but his sturdy boots no longer sat by the back door, his armchair sat empty and the smell of polish faded from the kitchen as no one sat at the table mending leather saddles and harnesses for the horses. She tried her best, for Eliza’s sake, but Kara felt his loss just as much as her sister did, crying herself to sleep some nights as the rawness of losing her own family resurfaced.

And life carried on much like it always did. They sold their grain and the pigs were butchered, the spring calves steadily grew bigger and Alex took one of the rifles out hunting foxes when she could. Kara painted the house the following summer, covered in white paint and sunburned through and through, and Alex started speaking to her again if only to comment on how disgusting it was that she still put jam in her tea. If there was one thing that Kara had learned in her short life, it was that things always carried on.

* * *

Lena was eleven the first time she saw her father hit her mother.

She’d witnessed countless arguments, of course. Overheard the sound of glass smashing against walls, the burning smell of brandy or whisky overpowering the room as the liquor fueled the fire where a tumbler had been cast into the fireplace in anger. Shouts echoed through the mansion and kept her up at night, tucked into her wide bed as she stared at the ceiling in the dark. Lena had even gotten used to watching her brother get cuffed around the ear like a small child, even though he’d been seventeen, and then eighteen and off to a nearby college, coming home on the weekends. 

Her father was an angry man, when he was around, that much had become clear to her over the years. He was never angry with  _ her _ though. Red-faced and burning with some unknown anger, shouting the house down as his stoic son stood square-shouldered, taking the brunt of it, Lionel would turn to Lena and deflate. The anger would dissipate as quickly as it had come, like a storm sweeping through, and his face would soften with sadness as he reached out to cup her face in a large hand. He looked older now, his face lined with age, and she knew that when he looked at her, he saw the daughter he’d lost and resolved himself to always be gentle with her.

From the moment she’d joined the family, everything had been at her disposal - if it came from Lionel. More often than not, Lena wouldn’t see her father from one week to the next, with him shut up in his office at the bank, or at his sports clubs, drinking over poker and cigars, dragging himself home in the morning to freshen up and change into a clean suit, before he was off to work, red-eyed and hungover, before Lena had even risen.

In the beginning, she didn’t see any of that. She thought he was always just working hard, funding the lavish lifestyle he’d earned for himself and his family, and she marvelled at it all. He was gentle with her, kind with a quick smile and a warm laugh, and she liked the fact that he doted on her in a way no one had before. It made all the time spent at home with her icy mother at opposite ends of the house, avoiding her for the simple fact that it was too painful to bear the loss of her other daughter, easier to bear, knowing her father loved her. She’d only had one parent before; Lena didn’t need more than one. And she had a  _ brother _ too. One all to herself, instead of the snivelling crowd of children at the orphanages, crying or boisterous and mean. What more could she want?

But she grew older. Her days were filled with lunches at golf clubs and fencing lessons, chess tournaments and yet  _ more _ language lessons, which she picked up so quickly, gathering an arsenal of words that rolled off her tongue almost like a second thought. There were riding lessons and ponies brought home as surprise gifts, and she was still small for her age, but less birdlike, a healthy glow to her cheeks as she grew taller. Dresses and skirts were in constant rotation, one barely worn once before it was given away to charity in exchange for a newer one in the latest styles. That was one area that Lillian was fastidious about; if she was forced to have a replacement daughter, she would parade her around as if she was her own, with the best of everything. 

Lena’s room overflowed with dolls and taffeta from her father, and the soft, leather-bound books and mind games her mother gave her, sharpening her mind instead of encouraging her to waste her time on soft toys and fairytales. It was almost surprising that her mother in pearls and diamonds, who was uptight about the silverware polished properly and throw cushion neatly arranged, was the one who pushed Lena the most. It was almost as if Lillian was trying to break her, to make Lena fall short of everything that Lex so effortlessly came by, to prove that she wasn’t up to the standards expected of a Luthor.

Instead, Lena flourished. It was like she was hungry for all the things she’d been deprived of before, growing accustomed to school and rapidly climbing to the top of her class, until they’d recommended that she skip a grade. She learned languages as if she’d been born to them, and could beat Lex in a chess match four times out of five. Devouring books on world history and religions, on wars and politics and even the elegant prose of poets and the heartbreak of Greek tragedies, she was forged into someone that took advantage of everything within her grasp. 

Perhaps it was the ingrained knowledge of her early years, the murky memories of the hollow knot of hunger in her stomach, the years in the orphanage and on the train, barely knowing how to read through the Bible, her only source of written material, or the fear of being left homeless again, worried that if she failed Lillian would convince Lionel to toss her out onto the cold streets of Metropolis. Whatever it was, it fuelled her with the scrappy motivation to rise up, working harder than anyone, mentally exhausting herself as her dolls collected dust and she memorised pages of Shakespeare. She was nearly twelve when she paused long enough to consider the fact that the house she was in wasn’t a family - not really.

It was after dinner and she’d been trudging through the sheet music propped up on a stand in her bedroom, callused fingertips arranged delicately on the strings of her violin as she played it over and over again, until the notes echoed strangely in her mind, drilled into her memories until she could play the first half off by heart without so much as glancing at the notes scrawled on the paper. Then came the shouts, barely audible over the soft music flowing around her, made by her own hands, until Lena let out a sigh and came to a screeching stop as the bow scraped along the strings. 

Nestling the violin in its case of leather and crushed velvet, she crept out of her bedroom and to the top of the second-floor staircase, hand gripping the polished bannister in a white-knuckled grip, listening to the muffled shouts in one of the sitting rooms or parlours. She wasn’t sure. Still, natural curiosity gave way, the weary dread of yet another night spent listening to the dulcet tones of her parents washing over her, and Lena slowly padded downstairs, still dressed in her school uniform.

Moving towards the source of the shouting, she pressed her ear up against the closed door and paused for a moment, until the telltale sound of tinkling glass announced the destruction of another glass, or perhaps a china vase. Things were replaced around the mansion with such rapid speed that it was almost like it never happened. A new vase would pop up, or a new gilt mirror, and the shards were swept up by silent staff, who never said a word about it. Of course, they would’ve gossiped in the kitchens and laundry rooms, but never within earshot of the family.

Lena wasn’t quite sure why this time she opened the door. She’d lurked outside dozens of times before, or peeked through the cracks of doors that had been left open, watching her mother stand eye-to-eye with her father, her anger cold and stiff, while his was hot, bubbling over and made his neck flush red. But she’d never felt inclined to open a closed door, as if even after nearly four years with the family, there was still a sense of not belonging within her. A closed door made it feel like it was not for her to see. Not welcome, it would speak to her as she lurked in the shadows of the hallways, listening silently in the shadow of an old statue or behind the drapes.

The brassy knob turned easily beneath her touch though, opening on quiet hinges and swinging inwards beneath her touch, almost as if it had been waiting for her to open it this whole time, welcoming her into the midst of the argument. Yet as soon as the door opened, she knew it was something not meant for her eyes. Knew it in the casual, almost after-thought manner in which her father slapped her mother across the face, as if he’d done it a thousand times before. And for all Lena knew, he had.

Lingering in the doorway, she watched as Lillian staggered backwards, a hand pressed to her reddening cheek. She didn’t look surprised at all, and there was an almost detached aloofness to her manner as she straightened up, tall and willowy, elegant even in the face of such violence. Yet Lena couldn’t stop herself from taking a few stumbling steps into the room, weak at the knees and ashen-faced, her green eyes round with shock as she moved towards her mother with a sudden rush of panic and concern for her. 

“Stop!” she shouted, her voice frail and shaky in the large room, the smell of alcohol soaked into the floor where Lionel had smashed another glass.

It turned her stomach and made her throat close up as her eyes stung. Putting herself in between them, she felt small and meek, and shockingly scared of the thundering man that loomed over her. But then Lionel saw her, and like all those times before, he deflated, her expression softening with a tender look as he flexed the fingers of his hands and gave her the same warm smile as always.

“You should be off to bed by now,” he said, no explanation or apology in his voice, almost as if it had never happened.

She flinched back slightly as he reached out to cup one side of her face in his big hand, his touch gentle and familiar. Confusion swept through her, and Lena stared up at him with the doe-eyed puzzlement of a child. In all of her tragic childhood, she’d never seen anyone lash out in such a casual manner, and it frightened her that her father, the man who bought her dresses and dolls, could be hiding so much cruelness behind his congenial smile.

“Come give your father a kiss goodnight, now,” Lionel gently coaxed.

Nearly tripping over her feel in the most inelegant lurch forward, Lena was stiff and numb as she moved towards him, obeying almost in fear that he’d hit her too if she didn’t, and allowed Lionel to bend down and kiss her cheek. He smelled of cigar smoke, cologne and alcohol, the familiar mix of scents she associated with him, and it felt like any other night, when she threw her hands around his waist and pressed her face into his shirt. But it was different, and she pulled back slowly, like a startled animal, afraid to move too quickly and earn the attention of a predator.

“Take her to bed,” Lionel dismissively address Lillian, “and get a maid to clean this mess up.”

Lillian’s slender fingers closed around Lena’s upper arm, all but dragging her from the room as Lena’s bottom lip started to tremble and her eyes filled with tears. Her mother jerked the door shut behind them and tugged sharply on Lena’s arm, before sighing and releasing her. It was a sigh Lena had received many times, one that told her that her mother’s patience was growing thin, that she was tired of Lena’s behaviour, that she was irritated by something she’d said or done. It was almost as if she blamed Lena for what had happened.

“Stop snivelling,” Lillian snapped, her eyes bright with anger, face stony and pale. “Wipe your eyes; you’re almost  _ twelve _ now. You shouldn’t be crying like a baby.”

Swallowing the small whine of protest that built up inside her like a sob, Lena drew in a shaky breath and quickly blinked her tears away. Squaring her shoulders, she jerked her chin up, an almost defiant look in her eyes beneath her brow furrowed with worry. With a softer sigh, one rarely heard, except for when Lena had fallen off her pony and landed badly on her wrist, or when she cried on the rare occasion. A sigh of resignation that brought out something almost maternalistic in her mother, whose maternal instinct seemed to have begun and ended with Lex. 

Pressing a hand to Lena’s back, Lillian ushered her towards the stairs and her tone softened ever so slightly. “Come on, off to bed.”

Her mother guided her all the way upstairs to her room, a place that Lillian rarely ventured, even when the pink furnishings of a child’s nursery had been replaced with the deep green colour that Lena loved so much. Even now, as Lena slipped into the bedroom, Lillian faltered slightly on the threshold, before stepping inside, her shoulders stooped slightly and a tired look on her face, eyes ringed with shadows of defeat.

“Mom?”

Her head jerked up at the quiet sound of Lena calling out to her, caramel pin curls splaying out before settling in a glossy sheen around her shoulders, and Lillian fixed her with a hard stare. “Quick. Pyjamas on.”

Hurrying to obey, Lena shed the cardigan and loosened her tie, her school blazer long since discarded, folded neatly over the back of an armchair. She shed her clothes as her mother lingered uncharacteristically in the bedroom, folding everything before placing it carefully in a pile, appreciative of every small luxury after so many years of so little. A soft white nightgown was fetched from the closet and Lillian impatiently beckoned her over to her and swiftly braided her long, dark hair for her, tying it off in a ribbon.

“Does it hurt?” Lena asked in a small, uncertain voice after Lillian was finished, feeling her mother’s hands still at the end of her braid, before one hesitantly settled on Lena’s shoulder.

“Not as much as he thinks,” Lillian brusquely replied.

Lena peeked up at her nervously, the heaviness of the evening pressing down on her chest, her breathing shallow and uneven. There was already the reddening mark, that would undoubtedly bruise, blooming on Lillian’s rouged cheek, and Lena chewed on her bottom lip as she held back the torrent of questions she wanted to ask her mother. Lillian didn’t like questions, least of all from Lena.

In a rare moment of affection, Lillian sighed again and smoothed Lena’s hair down gently, before cupping her chin in her cold grip. “He’ll never hurt you. That much I promise.”

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Lena nodded slowly, feeling the weight of her mother’s words settle over them. Despite her coldness, her detached manner of parenting Lena, the incessant pushing and testing that left Lena feeling strung out and confused, she didn’t doubt for a second that Lillian meant what she said. There was a fierce protectiveness to her, despite her reservations and hidden grief, and Lena knew that Lillian loved her in her own odd way. Perhaps she was never wanted by her, or so openly shown affection by her, but there was an element of care in all the things she gave her daughter, small weapons to sharpen her mind and help her rise up, even if Lillian had been hoping she’d fail along the way.

“To bed with you,” Lillian said with finality, her voice gravelly and blunt, “Mercy will be up to bring you some milk.”

“Can I read for a while?” Lena pleaded, reaching for the covers that had already been turned down, a warmth radiating from the mattress where the bed was heated within.

She slipped between the covers without protest, demurely sitting propped up against the pillows, trying to forget the events of the night as she put her hand on the leather embossed cover of a German book. Lips pressed into a flat line, Lillian paused for a moment, giving her a shrewd look as she hovered with one hand on the door handle. 

She inclined her head and then flipped off the light switch without another word, the wall between them slamming back into place as Lena switched on her lamp and picked up her book. As always, although albeit a lot less frequently as the years passed by, Lena thought of Kara then. It was over three years since they’d met on the train, and still, she thought of her often, wondering how tall she’d grown, if she still had bangs and liked babies, if she spoke English well now, and where she was. That night, Lena wondered if Kara’s new father hit her mother too.

She came back to that night often, every time they argued. Hovering around her mother as if that would dissuade him from hitting her again, poring over books and sewing in the corner of the sitting room, grateful for the nights when he didn’t come home again. Still, she knew enough now to pick up on the faint marks beneath her mother’s powdered face, the tense anger boiling within her brother whenever Lex came home for dinner, his cold eyes and the way he spoke as if trying to skirt around a bomb waiting to explode.

The following year, shortly after she’d turned thirteen, when Lionel didn’t come home again, she felt the familiar unwinding of her tense muscles as relief washed over her. When the police came early the next morning to tell them he’d wrapped his car around a tree trying to drive home from the club, Lena only felt relieved that she wouldn’t have to listen to the shouting ever again. It struck her as cold and distant that she felt that way about the man who’d spoil her rotten, but it was the truth, and as she stood there, dry-eyed in drab black funeral clothes, staring down at the bloated body shoved into the black suit, she found that she’d only come to fear him in the end.


	6. Chapter 6

The seasons changed and the years came and went and Kara grew up. Tall and blonde, a willowy gracefulness to her movements now that she’d grown into the long limbs and clumsiness of her childhood, she looked like an American sweetheart, her eyes like a periwinkle sky and the Russian lilt to some of her vowels all but faded with time. 

It had been a trying few years for her after Jeremiah’s death, and Kara had thrown herself into music and school and her chores until the farm had grown to be too much work for the three of them and the local boys that helped during the harvest for a few extra nickels. The year that Kara turned sixteen, Eliza sold the farm and they moved into the small town centre of Midvale, where her practice as the only educated doctor within a three town radius kept them afloat in their new house. Alex was off to college to study engineering that year, and they’d barely been keeping the farm running as it was with her help, and Kara couldn’t help but feel guilty as it was bought up by a new family and they found themselves in a different white clapboard house, identical to half of the other houses in the small country town.

Despite Alex’s initial anger and blame thrust upon Kara for the death of her father, they had slowly come to a tentative peace the year before Alex left for college. It wasn’t so much that they became friends, but Kara found that she rather liked her sister at times, and when she was left behind in Midvale to finish school and cook dinner for her and her mother, she found herself missing her sister. She missed the bickering and the sound of Alex stomping around the place in her heavy boots, she missed Jeremiah’s old coat hanging from the coat rack where Alex hung it up after coming back from hunting, and she missed racing her to the bathroom in the morning, although her sister had mostly grown out of her childish competitiveness by then, and would tiredly let Kara win more often than not.

The house felt empty without Alex, and Kara found herself lonelier than ever, spending her evening's sewing and reading with a cat in her lap. By the time she was seventeen, she was old enough to be permitted weekends at the town hall for chaperoned dances, wearing the blue dress Eliza had bought her for church and clutching a syrupy cup of too-sweet punch as she tapped her foot to the music and stood along the wall, her dance card empty and a contented smile on her face. She never went dancing, only to placate her mother, who worried that she didn’t have much in the way of a social life.

Kara didn’t mind though, because she was eighteen and would be going to National City in the fall. Once she graduated from high school she was going to study mathematics and live in a crappy apartment in downtown National City with Alex, both of them tolerating each other for cheaper rent, and Kara would be able to go to picture shows on the weekend and find out what was so magical about all of these glamorous actresses her sister wouldn’t shut up about when she came back on her vacations. The city was enticing to Kara, and she imagined herself working part-time while she studied, having friends and going on dates with people. 

It seemed like a different world away from Midvale, and it couldn’t come fast enough, but eventually, summer gave way to autumn and she was packing up the battered suitcase that had come with her the day she’d been adopted. Her dresses were neatly folded and her worn books were belted together, Streaky was crammed into a carrier and her mother drove her to the train station in the beat-up truck that Kara had come to Midvale in. 

It all felt very circular for her, and it was a tearful goodbye at the station with Eliza before she boarded the train, feeling anxious and somewhat claustrophobic in the train carriage, despite the differences to the one she’d been herded onto time and again all those years ago. Instead of hard wood, she sat on padded leather and the car smelled of lady’s perfume, cigarette smoke and fresh air billowing in through the open doors. 

The ride in was a few hours long and she had a packed sandwich that Eliza had made her that morning for lunch as she read a copy of the newspaper she’d bought at the station, the smell of ink and paper wafting every time she flipped a thin page. The carriage was filled with the sounds of people coughing and shifting, new people filing on at each stop, all of them dressed in suits and dresses fashionable in the small towns outside the city, and Kara nervously smoothed down her blonde hair the closer they came, worried that she wouldn’t fit in. 

She felt less Russian every day, but she wasn’t a city girl either and she was nervous that college would be another chance for her to be an outsider. Still, when the train pulled into the station, hissing and bellowing white smoke, Alex was waiting for her in a baggy men’s suit, her hair chopped fashionably short about her shoulders and gracefully waved, and Kara couldn’t help but smile widely at her. No matter what happened with college, she had her sister there, and despite the tension between them, she wouldn’t be alone.

“Aleksy! Hi!” Kara greeted her, setting down her suitcase to give her sister a one-armed hug as Alex rolled her eyes at the nickname that had stuck, and brusquely returned the hug with a quick pat on the back.

Drawing back, Alex hoisted up her suitcase and started grumbling about the stack of books Kara had brought with her as they started to wind their way through the centre of Central Station, slipping through the crowds like fish fighting their way upstream. It was a familiar place that made Kara’s stomach lurch with the memories, and she felt an odd queasiness in her stomach at the thought of being back in the city that had been home for a short while. This time, at least she wouldn’t be on the streets.

Outside, a hot breeze caressed her cheeks, despite the fact that it was late August, and she breathed in the smell of hot stone, belching smoke from coal factories and the sweaty odour of too many people packed into the streets, baking even in the shadows of the looming buildings. National City hadn’t changed much, but as Kara looked around she could see the progression in time in the number of cars backed up in traffic and the buildings that had only grown taller in her absence. It was like a living breathing creature, growing bigger and better as it digested the citizens fighting to make a living in the crowded factories, speakeasies and department stores springing up.

“Don’t stop,” Alex snapped, grabbing her arm and dragging her along at a rapid pace, “you’ll end up getting lost and I don’t have time to spend all day searching for you.”

“It’s almost the same as the last time I lived here,” Kara said, her voice low and wary.

She’d never told her sister about her life in National City, beyond the fact that her aunt had died and left her an orphan, and as Kara glanced around, she could see children that were just like her. Little girls crying as distractions for older boys to pick the pockets of gentlemen, shoe shiners blacking the toes of white-collar men as they read the newspaper, hawked by kids on every street corner they passed. 

The streets were still crowded, but the throngs of immigrants seemed to have thinned slightly, the ports sporting a few steam liners and an assortment of fishing barges and shipping cruisers, but there were fewer boats making the trip from Shelley Island to bring new immigrants to land. She could remember what that was like, dressed in thick furs as her Aunt Astra towed her along, sweating in the harsh sunshine of their new home as a dozen languages clamoured over one another. Kara could still hear those languages now, the familiar call of Russian that made her heart leap with joy, the bickering of Italian and the flurry of Hebrew, Greeks and Poles and Irish people all mingling together.

At the first sound of a lilting Irish accent, Kara’s head whipped around so fast that she almost gave herself whiplash, only for disappointment to deal her a heavy blow when she found herself staring at a young woman with red hair. Not Kieran. Kara felt stupid for even thinking that it was Kieran, even for just a moment, but she couldn’t help but remember the girl she’d met on that train, with the same lilt. It still plagued her, the endless wondering where she’d ended up. And Kal too, with the sweet old couple that had taken him. It left her feeling a little lost as Alex kept a tight grip around her wrist. 

As if sensing that there was something weighing heavily on her, slowing her down, Alex turned to give her sister a look of annoyance, which smoothed out into a questioning look in her dark eyes. They paused on the sidewalk, people parting around them, and Alex let go of her as she sighed softly. Jerking her head towards a vendor on the side of the road, Alex stepped towards the man holding a wicker basket full of pretzels and fished out a few coins in exchange for two. Handing one to Kara, she gave her a grim smile.

“Here. Your first street food.”

“Thank you,” Kara muttered, her brow furrowing slightly as she held the pretzel and stared at the flecks of salt baked into the shiny, buttered glaze of the treat. Looking up at her sister, she smiled half-heartedly, falling into step beside her. “You know … I actually used to eat street food all the time when I lived here. Not like- not like this. We would … there was a gang of us - the boys would steal.”

Eyebrows rising, Alex gave her a wary look as she bit into her own pretzel.  _ “Steal?”  _ she mumbled around a mouthful, an incredulous look in her eyes.

Nodding slowly, Kara shifted the cat carrier in her hand and looked out across the streets, finding groups of kids standing on the stoops of buildings or sharing their spoils in cluttered alleyways spilling garbage and sewage into the streets. She pointed a group out with the pretzel in her hand and watched her sister’s face as she looked in their direction.

“I was like them after my aunt died. Homeless. I slept on the streets every night and begged for food in the day until they picked me up for the train in exchange for a hot meal.”

Opening and closing her mouth wordlessly, Alex stared at the concrete as they walked shoulder to shoulder, crossing the street at the next block. “I didn’t- I didn’t know that you-”

“I know,” Kara softly replied as they turned left and then right. “I didn’t want to think about it; it’s hard not to now, being here. But it’ll be fun this time! I’m here with you, Aleksy. Now, show me this apartment of ours.”

The apartment, it turned out, wasn’t much. They would be sharing a suite in a women’s boarding house, with a bathroom situated at the end of the hallway that was shared with the occupants of three other apartments. Breakfast and dinner were served in a dining room on the ground floor, and Kara quickly came to realise that tardiness wouldn’t earn her any favours with the tight-lipped woman who ran the place. Neither did a cat escaping and getting into places where he didn’t belong. 

But still, it was all new and exciting and Kara was brimming with anticipation at all the new opportunities. She signed up for classes at the start of the semester, met classmates for study sessions at the diner, where they ate burgers and sipped soda, or spent her evenings studying in the old library, finding the smell of dust of fragile paper soothing as she worked through equations. Kara got used to the fact that the bathroom was always occupied in the morning and started waking up earlier to get ready, and let Alex convince her to trim her hair a little and set it into fashionable waves. She even got a part-time job selling popcorn and tickets at a theatre after class, giving her sister and friends free tickets to the picture shows that she snuck into on her breaks. 

The National City she lived in was worlds away from the one she’d first come to, and Kara loved every minute of it. She went on dates with boys who liked to drive fast in their father’s cars and bought new dresses that were a far cry from the modest farm girl dresses she’d brought with her, and now that they were older, she even got along well with Alex, finding that her sister was actually funny and kind when she wanted to be. 

She felt like a different person once more and embraced the newness of another life, even if she still clung to the memories of all of her other ones. Being back in National City brought back a wave of memories with Kieran, and Kara couldn’t help but think of her often, her head turning at every Irish brogue or dark hair, hoping that she’d see her old friend again. She wasn’t even sure she’d recognise her anymore.

* * *

The sprawling mansion on the edge of the water felt different after Lionel died. It was strange that it would feel so empty for the loss of one person who was never home that much to begin with, but it almost felt like a mausoleum or a church in wake of her father’s death, so silent that she would’ve sworn she could hear a pin drop in the east wing while standing in the west. No longer were the hallways filled with muffled shouts and the sound of smashing china.

Instead, it was just her and Lillian and a handful of staff. Lex dropped out of college to take over the bank chain and was at the office most days and out blowing his inheritance most nights. The house was quiet and lonely, and Lena crept through the hallways like a ghost haunting the halls, silent and unobtrusive, scared that her mother would toss her out onto the streets now that the person who’d brought her home was gone.

Of course, Lillian didn’t. Instead, she was sharp and demanding, scolding Lena for slouching, for not getting perfect marks on a history paper or for scuffing the toes of her shoes. Lena thought that her mother must’ve been lonely, and she became the fixation of Lillian’s boredom, taken dress shopping on a weekly basis, made to play violin for her mother’s dinner party guests and recite German poetry from memory in the evening as they sat by the fire. She did what she was told in the months following Lionel’s death, trying to make herself as small as possible so that her mother wouldn’t get any ideas about disowning her.

But Lillian didn’t seem to even consider it. She treated Lena like her daughter in every way, except for a lack of maternal affection, and Lena started to relax as time went on. She didn’t exactly have friends at school, but she would go to the picture shows with a few girls in her year so that they could make it a group date with some boys, and Lena was haughty and dismissive towards them which only further seemed to make the girls not like her.

She was fifteen when Lillian found a pack of cigarettes in her handbag, a look of contempt on her mother’s face when she came downstairs for breakfast, taking her seat in her usual spot, her brother’s vacant spot across from her. As she glanced at her mother’s face, the mouth turned down at the corners and the hard look in her eyes, Lena paused, wondering why she seemed so aggravated.

As Lena murmured a good morning, draping the fine cotton napkin across her lap as the footman, Corben, poured her a glass of orange juice and she took a piece of plain toast from the stack set in the middle, her mother reached out and firmly slid a pack of  _ Lucky Strikes _ across the pristine tablecloth. Blinking in surprise, Lena paused, butter knife stuck into the yellow lump in the dish, and she let the knife clang against the china as she set it down heavily, a sheepish look on her face as she looked up.

“I was looking for my pearls. I thought you might have borrowed them for the pictures on Saturday. I found this instead.”

Opening and closing her mouth, Lena balled her hands up in her lap, twisting the napkin between her fingers. How could she explain to her mother that Andrea Rojas’ boyfriend had bought them, and they’d been passed along to Lena and ended up in her possession? The packet was clearly half empty, and Lena felt her pale cheeks warm slightly.

“I only smoked one to try it,” she admitted.

“Where did you get it?”

Pressing her lips together, Lena was tempted to tell her the truth, but it would only spiral into something worse with other people dragged into it. So instead, she lied, the words rolling off her tongue in an effortless air of nonchalance that made Lillian bristle at her audacity.

“It was … an experiment. I was curious, but I didn’t like it. They made me cough.”

Lillian arched a perfect eyebrow at her and Lena swallowed thickly before her mother told her that she was grounded for a month. The only difference that made was that Lena wouldn’t be able to go to the picture shows with people from school, which wasn’t much of a punishment in her mind, although she didn’t say that. She’d just have to stay at home and endure the suffocating silence of the massive house with its creaking floorboards and old pipes.

But in the end, it didn’t seem worth upsetting Lillian over anyway, so Lena buckled down in school and even spent a few hours at the bank’s head office filing paperwork and running numbers for Lex, learning how to type in shorthand on one of the monstrous typewriters that spat ink all over her hands. She came home for dinner and did her homework and felt the yearning for Lillian to be pleased with her. 

Lena even agreed to a few double dates, just to placate her mother’s friends with gangly sons set to inherit their own fortunes, but she found them all dreadfully boring. After one particularly harrowing date at a stamp museum, when her date in question tried to kiss her, she pulled back so quickly that he tripped and headbutted her chin, leaving them both equally as embarrassed and bruised. Despite her need to please her mother, she wasn’t much good at dating, and soon gave up on the idea of it altogether, and Lillian agreed that she shouldn’t be wasting her time with all of that yet. 

She never lost the fear of being sent back though. The thought that any day a man with a moustache and a severe woman could show up on her doorstep and take her away, a troubled and disappointing invader who was too expensive for Lillian to look after anymore. Nevermind the fact that it would’ve been impossible for her old guardians to find her, the thought still gave her nightmares of being alone on a train with its close odour of too many bodies crammed in together, heading nowhere. But of course, she never did.

Instead, she graduated at the top of her class a year early and went to prom with the son of one of her mother’s friends, wearing an emerald green dress and a pair of diamond earrings Lillian leant her. He had a flask with him with the unmistakable smell of whiskey that was all too memorable for Lena, and by the time they made it to the hotel lobby rented out for the occasion, her date was already weaving back and forth on his feet. Twenty minutes later, he’d started a fight with another boy on the dance floor and Lena had promptly been kicked out with him. 

She called her mother to come and pick her up and listened to Lillian rant about how she was too good for boys like him, that she was wasting her time and had so much potential. Lillian wanted Lena to go to college and study mathematics or English literature, to do something with her life instead of spending it doting on a husband who would only fall into drink and ignore her as she was left to raise their children. She wanted more for her daughter than she’d had for herself.

Eager to please her, Lena applied for a position at Metropolis University to study linguistics, already speaking six languages and able to read four of them. With her grades and wealth, Lena could’ve gone to any Ivy League in the country, or even gone overseas, but after so long without a home, she was loathe to leave it in case she was never allowed back. Her future felt uncertain to her, so she commuted to the nearby campus and excelled at her studies, learning semantics and phonology and coming home in time for dinner, just her and her mother in their monstrous mansion, doing their best to overcome the stunted awkwardness between them.

All the while, she dwelled in loneliness, and at night she stayed up working on essays and translating texts, and when she flipped through Russian books, Lena couldn’t help but caress the words printed on the page and think of her childhood friend. She wished Karina was there with her now to take her loneliness away, and Lena wondered if she’d even recognise her. They were both grown up now, and so much had changed that she wanted to tell her about. 

Instead, her life continued its monotonous march forward, and despite her mother’s hopes that she’d do something interesting for herself instead of rushing into marriage, Lena found herself lingering in the safety of the home she’d clung to. It was unremarkable but safe, and she cherished the fact that she had a family more than anything, even if her brother was never home and her mother was distant. It was the one constant in her life now, and Lena made sure that nothing came in the way of removing her from the comfort she’d grown accustomed to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we will actually start getting to the ww2 part soon lmao


	7. Chapter 7

Lena made her first friend at college, finding a certain sense of kinship with Andrea Rojas, given the fact that she was the heiress to a wealthy family too. They’d both taken an elective English Literature class in their second year and became fast friends, attending cocktail parties and the pictures, shopping for the latest fashions and playing tennis at the local sports club. Her racy humour and raucous laughter, easy intimacy and worldliness made Lena nervous, yet eager to solidify their friendship. It was how she’d always imagined having a sister would feel.

Andrea was already engaged to an engineer, a man she’d met through her father’s company when he’d proposed a deal in manufacturing automobiles. Obsidian North had suffered during the Great Depression but had made a comeback in recent years, and Lena found Russell Rogers a charming match for her friend. 

It was in her fourth year of college, classes finished and finals over, on the cusp of graduating, that Andrea eagerly invited Lena to accompany her and Russell to National City. They were visiting Russell’s friend, a reporter who had recently moved there, chasing a story, planning to celebrate the completion of Andrea’s degree with a weekend of fun in a foreign city. Lena tried to object, wary of the city that held secret memories of bad times for her, but even Lillian encouraged her to go. 

Her mother was insistent, chastising Lena for all her time spent at home or on her studies. She could almost feel the prudent disappointment emanating from her mother, as if her lack of ambition to see the world was a flaw. Lillian would never be able to understand Lena’s craving for stability and home. It wasn’t a lack of ambition or drive - she had plenty of that - it was just a desire to have something that could never be taken from her. A family to come home to, something that she could pretend was filling the hole inside her, even if she still found herself feeling that emptiness.

Still, she went. The day they left, the sky was saccharine blue and warm, and Lena could already imagine the heat on the west coast, the cloying smell of too many bodies in the confines of the city, hot stone baking in the sun and the sewers overflowing with trash, the rancid smell permeating alleyways as it festered in the heat. And then there would be the children, skinny ankles and scabbed knees, wearing donated clothes with the despondent air of those abandoned and unloved that made Lena’s heart sick to bear the sight of. She saw herself in all of them and while they were in Metropolis too, she knew where to avoid the impoverished citizens of the city. National City had faded to a blur of hazy memories shrouded in despair, with a solitary bright spark that was Karina.

Lena still thought of her at times. When they’d covered Russian in class, she’d been assaulted with the memories, when Metropolis had a heavy snowfall in the winter, blanketing streets and making the sidewalks slick with ice, buried mounds of cars lining the roads, she’d wonder if she wished it was snowing where she’d ended up. She’d dine at dingy northern European restaurants selling borscht and black bread, practising her Russian with the servers and picking at the food, wondering what Kara’s favourite had been. 

They took a commercial flight across the country, Lena stiff with fear as the plane rattled and shook from turbulence, and she found the thought of flying ever again terrifying, already dreading the flight home. But they landed safely, and as expected, she was greeted with a wall of suffocatingly hot air, chasing away the frigid chill from the plane’s cabin. Palm trees waved in the distance and the smell of the desert was carried in on the air. The asphalt of the runway wavered in the distance like a mirage from the heat, and she donned a pair of sunglasses, seeking the refuge that the shade would offer.

They caught a cab to the women’s hotel that Lena and Andrea had booked rooms at, lavish suites with marble floors and velvet drapes, gilt mirrors and art deco wallpaper. Lena held her small valise in hand as she lingered on the sidewalk, watching Andrea say goodbye to Russell with an air of impatience. He had his own rooms at a different hotel, which Lena thought was ridiculous, given the fact that she  _ knew _ Andrea would bribe the front desk clerk to let her sneak him up tonight anyway.

Finally, they made their way into the cool lobby of the hotel and checked in, their luggage taken up for them, and Lena was glad to be in the cool shade of her room, allowing herself a few moments of privacy before she started getting ready for dinner. She changed into an emerald satin shift dress, nylons with a seam running up the back and her dark hair shaped into tight waves, lacquer hardening them. Rouge and powder gave her some colour and a brown pencil run across her upper eyelids gave her a mature look. She applied a deep red lipstick and blotted her lips, before sliding emerald earrings on and a matching necklace. Her Claddagh cross was slipped beneath the neck of her dress.

Despite the warmth and the sunshine, it was already nearing dinner time and Lena made her way down to the lobby, a small beaded bag in hand. Andrea had her hand threaded through Russell’s, and they were talking to a man that she could only assume was William.

“Lena! Finally,” Andrea beamed at her. “Well, you look ready for some fun.”

“Always,” she said with a droll look, before giving William a polite smile. “You must be William.”

He shook her hand and then clapped his together, an eager, childlike excitement on his face. “Right then, girls, are you thirsty?”

Brow furrowing slightly, Lena pursed her lips slightly. “Aren’t we getting dinner first?”

“If you insist, Miss Luthor,” William said, inclining his head slightly, “although bar nuts would do it for me. What do you say, Andrea? Russ?”

“It’s risky for us ladies to start drinking on an empty stomach. The night will be over before it even starts,” Andrea smirked, “what’s the best restaurant in the city?”

Hands in his pockets he turned towards the door and the four of them leisurely strolled outside, the air warm and the trees lining the avenue swathed in deep green leaves. It was a perfect early summer’s day, flowers spilling out of planters and the sky a dusky purple.

“Well, I don’t know about  _ best _ , but the Grand Hotel has a piano bar that serves good food. And I  _ know _ they’ve got nice martinis - you can quote me on that.”

They walked through the city as the sunset crept in achingly slow, the trio trying to include Lena as she dawdled behind, lost in memories that she didn’t even know she had as things resurfaced. It wasn’t much, just indistinct feelings or smells that were strikingly familiar to her, and she was happy to walk through a place that felt so distant to her new life, uncovering secrets that she didn’t even know she held within.

Eventually, they approached the heavy glass and brass door of the Grand Hotel, a doorman in livery opening it for them, and they were immediately identified as people that weren’t hotel guests and directed towards the bar. A chandelier like a starburst lit up the foyer, mahogany tables glossy in the amber lighting and large urns with flowers filling the air with a spicy scent.

Striking women in fur coats and long satin gloves swept through on the arms of men in morning coats, an old lady checked in with red leather luggage and a beady-eyed dog on a leash, while an older gentleman with a monocle spoke on the telephone, a newspaper folded beneath his arm. They all oozed wealth, calling to Lena in the way they carried themselves or spoke, in the cuts of the clothing and the effortless air of command that shrouded them. It was the kind of place she’d stay if she were married with a husband, or with her family, but inappropriate for young women to be on their own, the rowdy trio ahead of her attracting unwanted attention.

“In here, Lena!” Russell called out to her as they disappeared through the door to the bar.

In no rush to endure their drunken bawdiness, which she knew was inevitable, Lena watched the door shut behind her friends and made her way over to one of the sofas instead, sitting primly on the edge and taking a few minutes to sit and people watch. It was relatively hushed inside the foyer, and she felt a peaceful contentedness wash over her as she sat there, lost in her own thoughts.

Lena didn’t notice the blonde woman until she was nearly standing in front of her, an apprehensive look on her face as she bit her lip. Even in the amber glow of the lobby lights, Lena could tell that her wary eyes were blue, cautious yet hopeful. Her curls were neatly pinned back, burnished in the lighting, and there was a youthful cast to her face that spoke of innocence. Brow furrowing slightly at the intensity of her stare, Lena shifted uncomfortably on the edge of the couch, smoothing the skirt of her emerald satin dress as she looked elsewhere, effectively ignoring the woman hovering nearby.

“Excuse me? Miss,” a soft voice interrupted, the slight roundness of the words speaking of someone from a small town, a gentle, soothing accent that made Lena turn her gaze back to her.

There was an uncertainty to the halting way the woman spoke, a yearning for something that snared Lena’s attention, despite herself. Giving her a once over, Lena took in the beaded shift dress, such a deep blue that it was almost black, a cloche hat in one hand and a camel coat thrown over her arm as she held a small attaché case in the other hand. She looked like some sort of performer, or a regular on the jazz scene, slinging back cocktails in dark corners of bars. But there was a shyness to her that banished the latter thought from Lena’s mind; this woman looked meek and gentle, a farmgirl come to the big city to chase her dreams of making it big on the stage.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” the woman asked.

Tilting her head to the side, her close cap of dark lacquered waves barely moving, Lena eyed her with renewed interest. She’d spent so little time in National City that she doubted it, but there was a nagging feeling at the back of her mind that made her pause. This woman was in stark contrast to Lena, who was wearing clothes from Paris, red lipstick that her mother would sigh at, emeralds dripping from her ears and neck. Even if she’d spent all of her time in National City, Lena doubted this woman ran in the same circles as her, their lives worlds apart in wealth and status. 

“No, I don’t think so,” Lena kindly murmured, giving her a fleeting smile.

“I just- you seem  _ so _ familiar,” the woman said, edging closer with a mystified look on her face, her cheeks rosy as she flushed with her forwardness, before slinking back again. Her expression turned sheepish and her smile apologetic, yet there was a troubled look of a nagging thought on her face too. “I feel like we’ve met before, but … no. It’s my mistake. I’m sorry for bothering you.”

She gave Lena a slight not and backed away, turning to leave. Gripped by a sudden spasm of panic, Lena shot to her feet, taking a lurching step forward as her heels sharply clicked against the tiles. Reaching out slightly with a hand, Lena’s face crumpled with bewildered severity.

“Wait!”

The other woman paused and turned as Lena let her hand limply fall back to her side, giving her an expectant look of desire, as if Lena held the answers she was seeking. Opening and closing her mouth, Lena shrugged slightly and gave her a feeble smile.

“Sorry, I just- I’m not sure. Perhaps we do, but I don’t- I couldn’t say when.”

But the woman wasn’t looking at Lena, she was looking at the base of her throat, where her Claddagh cross had come spilling out from beneath the neck of her dress as she’d shot to her feet. Blue eyes slowly travelling up to meet Lena’s cautious stare, the woman narrowed her eyes slightly from behind her glasses, giving her a scrutinising look that made Lena’s skin flush.

“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but … are you- were you- did you live here thirteen years ago? Did they take you … on a train?”

Lena blanched as realisation slammed into her, her heart jumping in her chest as she blinked with surprise. Because it was so obvious now and Lena couldn’t believe that she hadn’t recognised her on sight, like all the times she’d imagined doing so in a crowd. Catching a flash of blonde hair and knowing, in her bones, that it was her. All those nights she’d spent thinking of her, and how time had distorted those thoughts. Standing before her was someone who was worlds away from the young girl she’d met on the train all those years ago. But it was her nonetheless.

“Oh my God. Is it really you … Karina?”

Blue eyes swimming with tears crinkled at the corners with joy and a wide smile split Kara’s face, stretching from ear to ear as she held back a choked sob. “Kierya, it’s you.”

The attaché case clattered loudly on the tiled floor, the coat and cloche hat gently landing on top with the slithering sound of soft fabric, and Kara moved first, sweeping Lena up into a crushing hug as her heart leapt at the sound of the old Russian nickname. A name made for her by Kara. She could feel the lean hardness of Kara’s body as she held her tight, chin on her shoulder and mind reeling. Her warmth enveloped her, and Lena breathed in her  _ Soir de Paris _ perfume, feeling her slender fingers grip her ribs, the faint pulsing of Kara’s heart racing as fast as her own. 

It felt like a dream, and Lena held her tighter and felt Kara tighten her grip in turn, tighter than anyone had ever held Lena before in her life. It felt like coming home, reunited with a lost piece of herself, and Lena felt the stinging feeling of tears at the back of her eyes, even as she tried to blink them back. 

Their embrace stretched on in the middle of the lobby, perhaps slightly inappropriate given the grandeur of the place as their belongings lay abandoned and they swayed in each other’s arms, but they were heedless of the stares. Eventually, Kara pulled back and looked down at Lena, a few inches taller than her, and tenderly touched her cheek as she smiled, before kissing her on both cheeks and pulling her close again.

Lena’s cheeks burned from the sensation of the kisses, more intimate than any moment she’d ever shared with anyone else, and it made her heart soar as she smiled and rested her cheek on Kara’s shoulder. 

“When I saw your eyes, I just- I was  _ so sure _ it was you. They look just the same,” Kara murmured as she ran her hand over Lena’s dark waves, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked for you in a crowd, thought I saw you out of the corner of my eye or heard your accent. You don’t even  _ have _ an accent anymore!”

“I thought of you almost every night,” Lena admitted, her voice thick with emotion. “The last thing you said to me was that you’d find me.”

“I wanted to. I  _ tried _ . It’s- it’s haunted me for  _ years _ \- the not knowing where you ended up. And then, well, life happened. But … is it  _ really _ you, Kieran?”

Slowly extracting herself from her embrace, Lena gave her a soft smile, “it is, but my name’s not Kieran anymore. I’m Lena.”

Kara smiled and drew in a shaky breath as she slowly shook her head in disbelief, amazed at the fact that she’d found her. “Lena,” she said, testing the name in her mouth, and Lena found her stomach dropping with weightless pleasure at the sound.

“And you?”

“They let me keep my name. Well,  _ Kara,  _ not Karina _ . _ ”

They both started to laugh then, the giddy absurdity of the moment catching up to them as they stood, both gripping each other’s arms, drinking in the sight with something akin to relief, as if they’d been waiting their whole lives for this moment and now they could finally relax. Lightness buoyed Lena’s heart as everything fell into place, and she couldn’t help but smile, the thrill of Kara’s presence intoxicating as her fingers encircled her biceps and set her skin on fire, like she was branding her as her own.

Lena had so many questions that she was desperate to ask, about Kara’s life and her parents, where she’d ended up and what she was doing now, if her favourite colour was still blue and if she missed the Russian winters even after all this time. Instead, she was rendered mute, too overwhelmed with pleasant surprise that she couldn’t even formulate the words.

“I’m sorry, this is all so …  _ absurd _ , but I- I have to go,” Kara said after a heartbeat, a mournful look crumpling her features as she cradled the back of Lena’s arms. “I have a gig.”

“A gig?”

Lena arched an eyebrow with mild surprise and a sinking feeling in her stomach. She didn’t want to be parted from her so soon, although she knew that they would reconcile again, drink cheap coffee in an all-night diner or share glasses of sherry in the dim lighting of a seedy bar that was inappropriate for them to step foot in. It felt too far away though, an unknowable future point, whereas Lena only wanted to dwell in the moment, to drink up every bit of Kara in an effort to make up for lost time.

An apologetic smile softened Kara’s features. “I play piano in the bar here a few nights a week. It’s not a terrible job, and the men tip well.”

“I was just on my way in there, actually. My friends are waiting for me.”

Reaching down to pick up her abandoned belongings, Kara straightened up and gave her a small smile, “I wish we could just leave now and go somewhere to talk.”

Lena turned and took a few steps towards the sofa, picking up her small beaded bag, before facing Kara and giving her an earnest look, nervous and trying not to sound too desperate. “I’ll stay until you’re finished. We can talk afterwards.”

Giving her a shy nod of gratitude, Kara moved towards the door to the bar, and Lena followed behind her. Andrea looked up, curiosity lighting up her face as she watched Lena enter with a stranger, and Lena gave her an exasperated look through the dimness and smoky haze as she parted ways with Kara, feeling impatience chafe at her mind as she fought the urge to take Kara’s hand and drag her out of there, job be damned. 

The plush carpet beneath her feet was purple, and the banquettes seating rowdy groups of friends and flirty couples were upholstered in wine red leather, soft as she dropped down beside William and ordered a gin fizz and the suggestion of a waiter who appeared seemingly out of thin air.

“Who’s the friend?” William asked, jerking his chin towards Kara, who took a seat on the padded piano bench.

“Someone I knew a long time ago,” Lena muttered, her voice too low to be heard over the sound of chatter.

Her concentration was solely fixated on Kara, fingers subconsciously wrapping around the glass of her drink as it was placed before her, the sharp piney taste of gin sliding down her throat with little acknowledgement on her behalf as she looked at Kara’s tapered fingers, visible from where she was sitting. They deftly skimmed along the ivory keys, feeling the smoky room with the dulcet tones of swing music as she ducked her head, eyes closed behind the lenses of her glasses, which reflected dim light back to the enraptured audience. 

She played Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, her voice clear and low, fingers working the piano with the practised ease of familiarity. Her face was bathed in dim yellow lights and Lena watched her the whole night, taking in the faint smile that curled her lips as Kara sang, the way her eyes sought her out in between songs. The jolt that would run through her whenever she realised it wasn’t a dream.

Conversation washed over her, a stray question or expected laugh at a joke snagging her attention for a heartbeat, but she wasn’t paying attention at all. Drinks flowed like water, her blood singing with the dizzying effects, and all the while Kara spoke to her through the piano, playing by memory or from the sheet music she occasionally pulled from her case. For the first time in years, Lena had the strange sensation of feeling known.

Requests were called out and Kara’s tip jar was overflowing, Andrea sitting on Russell’s lap as William slumped with a glass of whiskey in his hand, hair dishevelled and shirtsleeves pushed up. They were, all of them, deep into their cups, and Kara still had half an hour left of her set. Lena’s mind felt foggy yet centred on the sight before her, and when her friends made to leave, she was glued to the seat.

She knew that Russell would bribe the desk clerk at the women’s hotel they were staying at so he could slip up to Andrea’s room and spend the night with her. She knew that William would most likely find a woman to spend the night with too. And Lena was expected to go back to her room alone, to go to bed and sleep off the effects of the alcohol she’d consumed. Instead, she felt the anticipation of catching up with Kara looming before her, just within reach. 

She doubted she’d get much sleep, too much adrenaline coursing through her body at the thought of their reunion, but still, she bid goodnight to her friends, planning to meet in the lobby of the women’s hotel at noon the next day. The trio left and their laughter faded with them, leaving Lena alone in her booth.

It was after midnight when Lena found herself turned out onto the streets outside the hotel, the lobby spilling bright amber light out onto the sidewalk. The night felt still, empty and removed from reality, and Kara walked beside her, holding her case in hand, her coat slung around Lena’s shoulder as a cool chill permeated the dark city. It felt so different to Metropolis, yet achingly familiar in an unwelcoming way, those few years in an orphanage, breathing in the smell of baking stone and too many bodies packed into the city resurfacing as she breathed in the desert and gasoline smell of National City.

They walked past laundromats and diners, banks that her family owned and jazz clubs with the muffled sound of brass instruments barely audible behind closed doors. Lena felt all alone in the world, her hand in Kara’s empty one, feeling the piney taste of gin coat her dry tongue, mind swimming slightly with nervous anticipation. She had so much she wanted to say, and so little time to say it in. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, to be walking with Kara like that, as if they should have aeons of time stretching out before them, but Lena could only cling to the terrifying thought of letting her slip through her fingers again.

Wandering aimlessly through quiet streets occupied by huddled shapes of the homeless on stoops and skulking down alleyways, the drunks singing slurred songs, swaying arm in arm with their comrades, and giggling girls giddy with the freedom of going on dates with their high school sweethearts and dashing college boys. Lena ended up inviting Kara back to her hotel room, wanting her in the quiet comfort of the room, out of the chill and the shadows of night.

The room was spacious and lavish, making Lena self-conscious as she stepped inside, aware of the fact that she oozed wealth just from her bearing, the product of many hours of etiquette lessons and scoldings from her mother. Kara might’ve been too polite to ask what had happened to Lena after they’d been parted, but she wasn’t blind to the fact that Lena was polished and prim and staying in the fanciest women’s hotel in the city. 

Lena watched her as Kara set her case down, eyes roaming around the room, drinking in the fireplace and the poster bed, their feet sinking into the golden carpet. She shed the coat from her shoulders and hung it up on the coat stand inside the door, before hesitantly clearing her throat.

“Can I- can I get you anything? I can order us coffee, or food.”

“If you’d like,” Kara shyly smiled.

Lena telephoned downstairs and murmured a quiet order into the phone while Kara made herself at home, taking a seat on the loveseat and quietly cataloguing the room. It made Lena’s stomach flutter in a strangely pleasant way, to be in Kara’s company after so many years and have her feel so at home. It was like they’d always known each other, never been parted and become strangers. Lena knew virtually nothing about the woman in her hotel room, yet simultaneously knew her more intimately than anyone else ever could.

They were quiet as Lena moved around the room, to the vanity where she slipped off her jewellery, emerald earrings and necklace clattering into the dish, the shoes placed beside the armoire and red lipstick, powders and rouge that she washed off at the small basin in the water. Lena felt surprisingly vulnerable in her slip dress and stockings, barefaced and feeling like a young girl all over again. She was vastly different from the one with scabbed knees and a deep scowl, and she fretted that Kara would find her lacking. Perhaps they’d both created people in their minds that didn’t exist, and never had.

Offering up the use of the washbasin to freshen up after her long gig, Lena sat on a stuffed ottoman, perching on the edge and waiting for the quiet knock that announced the arrival of her order. Turkish coffee, thick and rich was placed on the coffee table, along with a spread of food. Potatoes in hollandaise, asparagus tips, cheeses and pickled peaches, celery hearts and deviled eggs. Lena found herself without appetite, sipping an espresso cup of coffee and surreptitiously eyeing Kara as she ate, silence hanging between them, thick with suspense.

Kara finished picking at the food, looking sheepish yet content, and Lena felt the burning drag of tiredness behind her eyes, the alcohol making her sleepy, and suggested they move to the bed for comfort. Turning on a lamp, she shut off the rest of the lights and they lay side by side on the wide mattress, their elbows touching, heat radiating off Kara and making her throat constrict with nerves.

Rolling onto her side, Kara propped her head up in her hand and reached out to gently trail her fingers over Lena’s bare arm, a gesture that was breathtakingly tender and sensual, catching Lena off-guard at the boldness and just how right it felt. Face slack with weariness, Kara’s eyes were half-lidded as she smiled softly up at Lena.

“How is this possible? I’ve dreamt of this moment for years.”

Lena felt the hard lump preceding the urge to cry, a pressure building behind her eyes as she was wracked with a wave of sadness. She didn’t know how to tell Kara that she’d waited every day for this moment, but had never thought it would come. In her experience, when someone you loved was lost, they never came back. 

“So have I.”

“What’s the best thing that’s happened to you since we parted?” Kara eagerly asked, her eyes languidly opening to stare at her with wide-eyed excitement, curls mussed and cheeks rosy. 

“Seeing you again,” Lena whispered, turning onto her side to face her.

Kara let out a quiet laugh, giving her shoulder a gentle nudge in reproach. “ _ Besides  _ that.”

“Meeting you for the first time.”

They both laughed that time, and Lena couldn’t remember the last time her heart had swelled with such joy, feeling so light that she imagined she could float off the bed and drift up to the ceiling, such was the buoyant delight at reuniting with her old friend. Her old family. 

“Besides  _ that,” _ Kara exasperatedly replied, a smile playing on her mouth.

Lena could feel her breath fan across her cheeks, smell her perfume and the coffee, feel her warmth and her blood singing to her. She didn’t want to feel different; she wanted to be Kieran again, the same person that she’d been on the train, with Karina and Kal. Not the rich girl with her family’s aloofness and the pressure of growing up in such a household.

“Is there anything besides that?” Lena whispered, her eyes mournful and her expression softening as she reached out to gently touch Kara’s cheek. “What about you?”

“My family,” Kara said, rolling onto her back to stare up at the ceiling, a smile curling her mouth as she closed her eyes. “They were good to me. I mean, my sister  _ hated _ me for a long while, and now she’s- well, she’s one of my favourite people in the world. They owned a farm, until my father died. There were horses and they had a piano. I used to run away a lot in the beginning, until it started to feel like home. Now, it’s hard to imagine I used to belong anywhere else.”

A faint smile dimpled Lena’s cheeks and she felt a calmness descend over her, the knowledge that Kara had been treated well, had been loved by her new family, washing away her old fears. The unknown had troubled her for years, and it brought Lena a sense of peace to know that the future she’d hoped for her childhood friend had been a reality.

Kara told her about the kitten she’d found and how she’d come to National City to attend college for mathematics. How she played piano on the side while completing her studies. She told her about her sister and the friends she’d made, about how she had started going to Temple on Saturday’s again, with the presence of a synagogue in National City. Lena was quiet, drinking it all up and basking in the sound of Kara’s voice, warm and soft, rising and falling as she gestured with her hand. She watched her face the whole time, mesmerised by the sight of her, the roundness of her face lost to the years, the bangs that had covered her forehead grown out now.

“And what about you?” Kara eventually asked.

Blinking in surprise, Lena raised her eyebrows slightly. “Me?”

“What happened to you after we parted?”

“I-” Lena started, before cutting off, her teeth gently biting into her lip as her expression clouded for a moment. 

Letting out a soft sigh, she rolled over onto her back, laying side by side with Kara, and looked up at the ceiling. It felt easier to say it without feeling ashamed, without feeling embarrassed for her fortune and the lingering darkness beneath the wealthy veneer that coated her family’s life. She’d been lucky, truly, but the strict coldness of her family had left Lena feeling a strange emptiness inside, a hole where nothing grew, no nurturing hand coaxing that place to life with love and affection. 

“The train went across the country,” she continued, her voice uncertain and raspy, eyes closing to the world as memories swallowed her up. “We went all the way to Metropolis. No one wanted me. I- when we reached the station in Metropolis, I ran. I took my bag and I managed to make it out of the terminal, and I ran. It was raining and I had no idea where I was, but I just- I ran and ran. Block after block. And I ran straight into a man.”

The memories of her father were painful in hindsight, and Lena felt a yearning for the small handfuls of love he’d doled out when he was home, buying her dolls and dresses and gently stroking her hair as she kissed him goodnight. She wasn’t deluded into thinking Lionel was a good man, but he’d loved her, and Lena missed that feeling more than anything in the years after his passing.

“He- he was a banker. He was kind, wiping my face with a handkerchief, putting his umbrella over me. I told him I was an orphan when he asked where my mom was, and then he took me home. I didn’t realise until afterwards, it was because I reminded him of his daughter that had died. I was a … replacement. I think- well, he’d been grieving for a while. But he took me home, said he had a wife and a son - my new mom and brother. The house … that was an understatement. It was massive. This sprawling mansion.”

Pausing, Lena swallowed thickly, her brow puckering slightly as she spoke, voice quiet and her body hyper-aware of Kara’s stillness beside her.

“I was introduced to my new mother and brother, and that was that. I could tell she didn’t like me much; she didn’t  _ want _ a replacement daughter. But she did what little she could, and I think- I think she’s come to love me, in her own way. She’s not a particularly warm woman, but she always pushed me to be better. They had servants and bought me tailored dresses and ponies and tutors. It was … like a dream. Soon afterwards, they asked if I would change my name to Lena, for their dead daughter. For the longest time, I’ve felt like a ghost, masquerading as a dead girl, trying to be perfect for them. The fear that they’d send me back never really left me.”

Drawing in a quiet, shuddering breath, she exhaled sharply. Kara’s hand closed over hers and she squeezed gently in reassurance. Lena’s lips twitched with a wry smile as she squeezed back. Her body felt leaden, sinking into the mattress with a heaviness that made her feel detached from it, as if she was a disembodied voice. It made it easier to talk.

“My father loved me. I know that he did. But … he wasn’t a good man. He’d argue with my mother all the time, and when he died, I think we were all glad. Not that he was home very often, but it- we all walked on eggshells when he was. My brother took over the business and it was just my mother and me at home. She wanted me to go to college, to make something of myself outside of being a wife, so I signed up for college to study linguistics. I graduate in a few weeks.”

“Have you- are you happy? Has it been good?”

Letting out a strained laugh, Lena rolled back onto her side, propping her head up in her hand and gave Kara a half-hearted smile. “I’m lucky,” she whispered, “I know that I am. Not many people can say they were adopted by millionaires and spoiled rotten, but … that doesn’t fix everything. I think- I’m not  _ un _ happy. It’s been a good life, but there’s been … something missing. I’m not sure if that’s because of the life I’ve lived or if it’s just  _ me _ . But I’ve never been happier than I have been tonight.”

The kiss caught her off guard. One moment she’d been looking down at Kara with a grim smile on her face and the prickling beginnings of guilt at her complaints, and then her old friend was pushing herself up to meet her eye level, her expression softening as she reached out to cup Lena’s face in her hand. Her lips were soft and warm, the featherlight touch hesitant, as if questioning whether it was okay or not. And Lena didn’t know whether it was allowed, but nothing had ever felt more right. She kissed her back, her hand on Kara’s hip bone, and felt a searing heat rush through her.

Separating, they stared at each other with parted lips, pupils dilated and chests rising and falling quickly. Lena could count the freckles scattered across Kara’s nose, feel the heat of her breath caressing her lips, and feel the weight of the moment, waiting for one of them to react.

Lena barely dared to breathe as Kara reached out and lightly ran her fingertips over her necklace. “You still have it.”

“I never take it off.”

“Good.”

They were quiet for a few moments afterwards, staring at each other with wonder. Kara’s hand was pressed to Lena’s collarbone, the fluttering of her heartbeat pulsing beneath her touch and yellow lamplight illuminated the soft curves of her face. Lena wanted to caress her jawline and her cheekbones, brush her fingertips over her eyelids and down the line of her nose, drink in every bit of her with her hands. 

She knew it was wrong, had heard whispered scandals of such encounters, but her whole body seemed alive for the first time in her life. She could feel every bit of it yearning for Kara and it shocked her that someone she’d known for a short amount of time a lifetime ago could have such a hold on her already, as if they’d known each other their whole lives.

Eventually, Kara posed a question, which Lena answered, and they fell into conversation again. Soft whispers of things that had happened to them, and things they wanted to do, places they’d been and things they’d dreamt of. With each new facet of information, Lena felt as if she’d already known it, as if this woman before her was someone she was achingly familiar with.

They talked all through the night, hours slipping by unnoticed, until the first light of dawn started to seep through the windows, lightening the room to shades of grey. She watched as Kara struggled to stay awake, her eyelids drooping and the effort to open them growing visibly harder, and Lena lay on her side, her hand on her waist, whispering to her to sleep. She didn’t want her to go just yet. 

Breathing slowing, she watched Kara lapse into sleep, her body relaxing, golden curls splayed out around her head, and Lena reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together and feeling her mind turn fuzzy at the edges. She fell asleep thinking about the fateful steps that led her to that moment. To Kara.

If she hadn’t let Andrea coerce her into the trip, if they’d stopped for something to eat or Russell had suggested a different bar, she might never have bumped into her. There were so many impossible moments that had lined up to bring her to this moment, and Lena tiredly marvelled at them as sleep quietly snuck up on her. If she hadn’t run away in Metropolis, she wouldn’t have ended up with the Luthor’s. If she hadn’t ended up with the Luthor’s she never would’ve gone to school and got the best education available for women. She would never have gotten into college and met Andrea, and never been invited on the trip to Metropolis. She probably never would’ve seen Kara again, the impossibility of the moment having such slim chances that it was a small miracle in itself. 

But no, the last thought the blossomed in Lena’s mind before sleep stole her away was that it didn’t feel like chance. All of it, all of the other events of her life, had been chance. But this was the first time anything had ever felt like fate.


	8. Chapter 8

_ “Move to National City? _ Good grief, what could possibly be so interesting on the West Coast to warrant that?” Lex drawled, exhaling a thin stream of white smoke to add to the haze of grey shrouding him as he held a cigar between two fingers.

Floundering speechlessly for a moment, Lena shrugged helplessly as she sat primly on the love seat, a well-read clothbound copy of  _ Anna Karenina  _ in its original Russian propped open in her lap. She’d barely managed to get through a page as they’d lounged in the living room after dinner, too distracted by thoughts of Kara.

She’d returned to Metropolis only the day before, an ache in her chest and a reluctance to come home, the latter of which was shocking, to say the least. Ever since she’d been adopted, Lena had been wrought with fear that she’d be abandoned again, kicked out and banished from the only real home she could remember having, and yet now she found herself bursting with the need to fly out west. After finding Kara again, every fibre of her being was itching to stay by her side.

“I had a mind to enjoy a bit of sun and a change of scenery for a little while.”

“But you  _ hate _ the sun.”

“Well … perhaps it’ll be good for me, regardless. I was also going to suggest an expansion of the bank. Have you considered branching out west? It’s ambitious, I know, but if I were to be there …”

Lex raised his eyebrows as he reached for his brandy, a goading look in his eyes. He let out a short chuckle and took a sip of his drink, before setting the crystal tumbler back down and reclining in his seat. The cigar smouldered cherry red as it smoked faintly, forgotten about in his amusement.

_ “You _ managing a branch of the bank? You’re a modern woman, dear sister. You’re smart and- and  _ fashionable _ , and perhaps if a woman were to run a business you’d be the very best choice, but what  _ do _ you know of business? Hm?”

Rankling slightly, Lena opened her mouth to protest, to convince him, desperation welling up inside as she grasped for anything that would warrant her moving to National City to be with Kara. But before she managed to speak, her mother interrupted.

_ “I _ think it’s a good idea.”

Both Lena and Lex turned to face her, surprise etched onto both of their faces, and Lena watched her take a sip of sherry as she rustled the newspaper, swallowing thickly as her hopes were buoyed once more.

“Really?” she asked, her voice coloured with surprise.

_ “Really?” _ Lex echoed in disbelief.

With a wry smile, Lillian arched an eyebrow and neatly folded her newspaper, slapping it down on the table and straightening up. Her pearls were peach-tinted in the firelight and she turned the stem of her glass between nimble fingers as she pursed her lips.

“Yes, I think it’ll be good for you. Go and see some of the world before you settle down and marry. Perhaps some sun and distance will be good for you; you’ve barely left the city since you came to us. And perhaps the men on the West Coast will be more to your liking. God knows none of the ones here are.”

Scoffing with laughter, Lex placed the cigar between his lips and inhaled and then exhaled a cloud of white, before setting the cigar in the ashtray on the coffee table.

“And what of the bank?”

“Lena, I’ve given you the greatest education I could, one befitting a man even, but I agree with your brother on that much, at least. You’ve never shown any interest in sitting in an office with numbers and tiny men; I should think you’d like to pursue your aptitude for languages.”

With a pointed look, Lex leant back in his armchair, one arm slung around the back, and looked at his mother across the room.

“But … I’m not sure what good Russian and French will do. I mean … what kind of career will I make from that? Interpreters aren’t very high in demand.”

“A  _ career?” _ Lex snorted, “what use do you have for a career?”

“Don’t  _ mock _ her, Alexander. It’s commendable that your sister wants to make more of herself outside of the family name. Although, I do agree, Lena, dear. There’s no need to fret about making a career for yourself; perhaps you might study a new language while there. Or … teach one, if you’d like to do something more fulfilling.”

Brooding over the idea for a few moments, Lena chewed on the inside of her red-painted lips. Truthfully, she’d been using the bank expansion as an excuse to move out west, but her mother seemed delighted with her desire to move, regardless of what motivated the reason. It wasn’t like she needed to earn her keep, given her family, and as long as she got to be closer to Kara, Lena wasn’t fussy about how she passed the time. Perhaps she could take up Mandarin as she’d been meaning to when she had the time.

“I suppose so.”

“Excellent. Well, I suppose that’s that then. I’ll ensure that the bank pays you your monthly allowance, of course, and I’ll have our realtor look into an apartment for you. When do you mean to go?”

“As soon as possible,” Lena eagerly replied, her green eyes sparkling with delight as the warm feeling of excitement kindled inside. 

Lips pressed together and a bewildered look of amusement on her face, Lillian softly cleared her throat and tilted her head to the side. “You seem so keen to leave us behind, after so many years determined to stay. What’s so important out west that has you rushing to get back.”

Fighting back a flush of heat creeping its way up her neck, Lena picked up her book and thumbed the curled edges of the yellowed pages as she tried to maintain a nonchalant air about her. Brushing back a lacquered wave of dark hair, Lena gave her mother a thin smile and raised a shoulder in a languid shrug.

“On the contrary,” Lena curtly replied, “I’m not keen to leave either of you or my home, but my trip out west has … made me hungry for something different. It’s a different world out there, and I find myself excited to travel all of a sudden. Like you suggested.”

“Hm. Well, it’ll take at least a month to set up a household for you. It’ll give you some time to say goodbye to your friends and pack everything up. And graduate, of course.”

Lillian seemed rather smug about the latter, a pinch of pride colouring the worlds as her mouth curved up into a smile. Lena knew that her mother would’ve relished the thought of a proper education, rather than governesses and etiquette lessons, and lived vicariously through the fact that her adopted daughter had earned herself a degree. It was one of the few things she’d invested her interest in where Lena was concerned, and she’d gladly welcomed the scraps of attention it had brought her. 

Perhaps moving to the other side of the country would satisfy Lillian’s desire to have travelled when young and serve to make her warm to Lena even more. Either way, the agreement filled Lena with joy and nervous anticipation, and she couldn’t wipe the smile from her face as they laid the conversation to rest and went back to their respective activities in relative silence.

Later on that night, when her mother had gone to bed and her brother had shut himself up in their father’s office downstairs, Lena was in her bedroom, dressed for bed in a cream silk chemise and her hair in pins. A cup of tea cooled on the end table as she lounged on a chaise with a scrap of paper in hand. A series of loopy letters were scrawled across the thin paper and she thumbed them as she lay with the plastic telephone resting on her stomach. 

It rose with Lena’s breaths, and she nervously hesitated for a few moments, before picking up the plastic handset and eyeing the rotary of numbers. Drawing in a deep breath, she dialled the phone number, sticking her finger in each hole and dragging it around, until the phone started to ring. It was a few minutes before she was put through to the other end and she shifted up on the lounge, drawing her knees to her chest and cradling the receiver in her lap. 

_ “Hello?” _

“Hello, I’m looking for Kara Danvers,” Lena haltingly said to the unfamiliar voice. 

_ “I’ll go and get her for you,” _ the voice wearily replied.

Relief made Lena’s shoulders sag against the arm of the chaise lounge and her heart fluttered in her chest as she waited patiently. It felt like an eternity before she heard footsteps on the stairs and the chattery voices of other women in the background before the phone was picked up again.

_ “Hello?” _

“Kara,” Lena softly greeted her, the name full of warmth as it fell from her mouth. “It’s Lena.”

_ “Lenochka!” _

“Ah, so is that my new nickname?” Lena laughed.

There was a lighthearted laugh on the other end of the phone, tinny and distant but undeniably Kara’s, full of warmth and delight. It made Lena’s stomach clench.

_ “Kierya doesn’t seem to fit you anymore,” _ Kara wistfully sighed,  _ “but us Russian’s love our nicknames.” _

“I remember.”

Both of them fell silent for a moment, and Lena found herself tongue-tied with shyness, yet aching to talk to Kara all night, through the dark hours until day broke again. Every bit of her ached for her in a way that was shockingly precocious, yet felt long overdue. 

_ “How was your flight back home?” _

“Long,” Lena murmured, “lonely.”

_ “Do you miss me already?” _

“More than you know.”

Kara laughed again, short and sad.  _ “I think I know.” _

“I have something to tell you,” Lena hedged.

_ “Oh?” _

“I’m making arrangements to move to National City.”

There was another pause, just for a moment as Lena’s stomach plummeted like she’d thrown herself off a cliff. The implications behind her words were clear, and she hoped Kara wouldn’t think her too forward for them.

_ “Really?” _ Kara whispered, her voice small and hopeful.  _ “You’re truly moving here?” _

“As soon as I can.”

_ “I- do you want to? For your own reasons, not just because we-” _

“I assure you my reasons are entirely selfish,” Lena softly chuckled. “I just- I wanted to tell you. There’s a lot I think we should talk about when I come back, things that I’m … not quite sure I understand myself, but, well, I’m coming back.”

_ “Lena, I-” _

There was the sound of muffled voices in the background and then Kara’s heavy sigh over the phone.

_ “I have to go. Mrs Stein has a strict curfew at the boardinghouse. I’ll … talk to you again soon.” _

“I’ll call you,” Lena murmured.

_ “Dobroy nochi, Lenochka.” _

“Goodnight, Kara.”

The line went dead on the other end and Lena slowly put the phone back on the cradle, hugging it to her chest as she looked at the bedroom with a distant look in her eyes. A lamp cast a warm, buttery glow over the dark furniture and she eyed the spines of her books as the quietness of the night blanketed the old house.

Slowly, she put the rotary phone on the floor and reached for the cup and saucer. Her eyes were heavy as she sat there, sipping her cup of Earl Grey with thoughts of Kara monopolising her mind. Lena wasn’t sure if she was making a good decision, but it felt like the right one. Nothing had felt so perfect and whole as that night with Kara, talking about everything and anything. Nothing had been as sweet as that one gentle kiss.

And with those thoughts came the doubts. Everything Lena had been told made her think that it was wrong, yet if it was wrong, it wouldn’t have felt so good. That was enough to convince her that she was making the best decision for herself, for the first time in her life. It might’ve felt rushed to have such strong feelings after years apart and a handful of hours together, but Lena had clung to the memory of her old friend that it didn’t seem rushed at all in her mind. Despite everything that had changed for both of them, in her heart she knew every inch of Kara in a way that no one else ever could. And Kara knew her the same.

She went to bed that night with a troubled mind and impatience making her restless. Leaving Metropolis couldn’t come soon enough, even if it happened the very next day. Even a moment away from Kara felt like too long. Reuniting with her out of the blue had lit a fire inside Lena, stoked the flames of the embers of love she’d had for her childhood friend who’d been her only family, and it wouldn’t die down this time. She’d  _ found _ her. No matter what came next, Lena knew that she had to pursue the burning desire to chase after Kara and feel that same sense of home that she’d been searching for her whole life. No matter who said it was wrong.

Still, it was another five weeks before she moved. Time seemed to drag by in a constant flurry of activity, with maids packing away Lena’s books and neatly folding her clothes, shopping trips with her mother to ensure she had a new wardrobe as well, as well as furniture shopping for the new apartment procured for Lena. There were farewell parties and tea parties, socials at the golf club and college applications for a master’s degree. 

The only moments of peace and quiet were in the stolen moments late at night when she called Kara before boarding house's curfew came into effect. For hours on end, Kara monopolised the phone, much to the ire of the other young women she shared her home with, and even though they were hours and miles apart, it almost felt like they were with each other. There was a sense of closeness that came from swapping stories and snippets from their childhoods, and although she hadn’t told her mother or brother about the lost friend from the train, Lena held Kara in a secret place in her heart.

But eventually, the day came. Graduation had come and gone and the final boxes had been sent to National City to await her arrival, a maid, butler and footman had been employed for her and she’d said farewell to what few friends she’d made over the years. Truthfully, the only person Lena was likely to miss was Andrea, but her friend had a penchant for travelling and Lena knew that she’d see her again soon enough. Most likely her mother too, although she doubted Lex would be able to tear himself away from the business or his drinking buddies to venture out west to see his little sister.

It was almost a relief to finally leave behind her home, and only due to the surety that she would be welcomed back with open arms. But in truth, Lena hoped that she’d find a home with Kara, a new family forged from the bond they’d created all those years ago, and the worrying thoughts of being abandoned by Lillian no longer troubled her like they once had.

On a cold, early October morning, she found herself saying goodbye to her mother on the front steps of the sprawling house she’d arrived at as an orphaned child in worn clothes. She left in silk and pearls and a fur-trimmed coat, soft kid gloves and a small purse in hand, her breath pluming before her in the chill of the mid-autumn day. The sky was grey and the leaves on the estate were rust coloured as they drifted down to carpet the perfectly trimmed lawns, only to be raked up by a team of gardeners. 

Lena would miss the pristine perfection of the mansion and its well-oiled staff. It was strange how quickly she’d grown accustomed to having her own way, everything available at the snap of her fingers, and it was with a wry smile that she kissed her mother’s cheek and let her wrap her in a stiff hug, a rare display of seeming affection. She’d already said her goodbyes to her brother last night, knowing he’d be gone before she woke that morning, so Lena was quickly off, bundling into a black town car and pulling away from the steps leading up to the front door. Lillian lingered a moment with a stoic expression on her face before she stepped inside and their butler closed the door.

The flight was longer than Lena would’ve liked, the spacious leather seat doing nothing to ease her fears as they rattled through the sky. With a glass of gin to take the edge off, she breathed slowly and deeply, each draft of wind outside felt in the way that Lena’s stomach dropped as if she was in free-fall. Still, not even the perilous dangers of flying in a tin can could separate Lena from Kara, and she found herself breathing out a sigh of relief as the plane landed, bouncing and shuddering along the tarmac of the runway before it came to a halt.

Wrapped up in her warm clothes, the heat hit Lena like a slap in the face. A cerulean sky greeted her through the oval mouth of the door and her dark cap of lacquered curls stuck to her temples and the back of her neck as she perspired. Even in October, she could feel the heat radiating up through the soles of her shoes as she stepped onto the black asphalt, shimmering in the distance like a mirage where the sun baked the ground. 

As she walked across the runway with the other passengers, shedding wool coats and felt hats, she shaded her eyes against the brilliance of the sun and took in the slender palm trees waving their fronds in the warm breeze, the smell of gasoline and dry desert air mingling in the heat. Each breath was dry and Lena rankled against the lingering summer weather, before slipping inside in her shift dress.

Her luggage had been sent on ahead of her, leaving her to exit the milling airport without the bothersome task of fetching her valises and hat boxes. Stepping out under the shaded awning covering the entrance, Lena’s sharp eyes scanned the row of cars. Yellow, bulbous cabs idled as the drivers smoked and shouted back and forth, crisp chauffeurs in black hats and dark suits held cards with names written on them as they waited alongside bottle green and beige Cadillac’s. She was searching for her own name amongst them when a shout caught her attention amidst the cries and honking.

“Lenochka!  _ Dobry den!”  _

She turned at the sound of the Russian nickname, expression brightening with delighted surprise as she recoiled slightly, a hand going to her chest and the old Claddagh cross beneath her maroon dress. As she watched, Kara hopped over the side of a powder-blue car with a tanned canvas top cranked all the way down to expose the interior, smoothing down the yellow skirt she wore as she briskly walked towards Lena.

_ “Kara? _ What are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t let you get here with no one to greet you now, could I? Or get a cab to your new home.”

They both broke out into wide smiles as Kara stopped before her, a moment of shyness bringing them to a stop before they hugged each other tightly. Lena shook with a breathless laugh as she breathed in the rose water smell of Kara’s perfume, before she pulled back, holding her at arm’s length.

“I borrowed a car from one of my jazz friends. He plays the sax. You’ll love him,” Kara continued to ramble, before she cut off, brow furrowing with concern. “Where are all your bags?”

Looping her arm through Kara’s, Lena chuckled, “they’ve already been taken to my apartment.”

“Oh. Okay, so you’re ready to go?”

“Just one thing.”

Turning them in a slow arc so they were facing the opposite direction, Lena raised a hand and gestured off-handedly towards a man in a black suit standing beside a Cadillac. 

“That man there - do you see him? He’s my chauffeur.”

_ “Oh.” _

“Let me just tell him that I’ve made other arrangements so he’s not standing in this heat for an hour.”

“You don’t-”

“I  _ want _ ,” Lena said with a smile that creased the corners of her eyes.

She held up one finger and gave Kara a small smile, before turning on her heel and hurrying towards the man holding her name on his sign, spotted moments before Kara had called out to her and captured her attention. With an apologetic smile and a dollar bill for his trouble, Lena marched back over to Kara with a pleased look on her face and a flutter in her chest.

“Right, shall we get out of here?”

They made their way towards the blue car parked on the side of the road, and Kara climbed over the side and settled on the beige leather seats, slipping a round pair of sunglasses on as Lena opened the door and slipped in in a more demure fashion. The leather was warm and clung to her clammy skin as she buckled herself in and donned her own sunglasses, tossing her hat and coat into the back.

Kara’s hair was a mass of golden curls in the sunshine and Lena felt her stomach clench with nervous excitement as Kara pressed her foot to the accelerator and eased the stick-shift into gear. Soft-top down, wind in their hair and the scarf knotted around Kara’s neck fluttering in the breeze, they set off through the smoggy city, breathing in the hot air as it scorched their throats and breathed in the salt-laced tang that swept in from the bay as Kara drove them into National City, following the address Lena gave her.

“So, what do you want to do first,  _ milaya?” _

Fixing Kara’s side profile with an intense stare from behind the lenses of her sunglasses, Lena’s red mouth curved up into a smile at the term of endearment, making her insides clench with pleasure, and she relaxed against the soft leather as the sun beat down on them.

“I want you to show me your world.”


	9. Chapter 9

Lena delved into Kara’s world with wide-eyed disbelief that she was really living it. Time seemed to fly, each moment spent giddy with excitement and the newness of everything, rediscovering the warm streets of National City with Kara beside her. Her new life was worlds away from the one she’d led in Metropolis, and for the first time in years, Lena felt truly alive.

She met Kara’s friends and her sister, accompanying them to dingy speakeasy bars hazy with smoke as they drank cocktails and passed cigarillos around, eating lunch at greasy burger joints as they sipped cola after picture shows, gushing about the Hollywood starlets, looking glamorous in black and white as they were wooed by dashing gentlemen. 

On weekends she’d meet Kara at a narrow restaurant in Chinatown after her Mandarin lessons, ordering slowly from the menu as clusters of regulars played Mahjong at the back of the room, their voices rising and falling with the musical sound of Cantonese that Lena struggled to eavesdrop on. Many evenings were spent with Kara at the library of the college campus, flipping through a magazine as Kara pored over books of equations and calculations, proofreading her essays for her over bitter cups of coffee later that evening.

Her world was full of flashing neon lights and late nights at bars, charming young men into buying them drinks, odd tutoring hours for the children of well-to-do businessmen as she taught them French, German and Latin, dress shopping in new department stores, full of every latest fashion from Paris and Milan, and enjoying life with the freedom that was bestowed upon the wealthy.

National City was achingly familiar, yet worlds away from what she remembered. The orphanage she’d dwelled at for years, picking up scraps of sentences from children born in every corner of the world, and walking past it brought back a barrage of painful memories, each one a stinging slap across the face for Lena. She remembered the hard soap they would scrub her with and the itchy donated clothes, the skinned knees and her eyes sore and red from crying. She’d been a sullen, lonely child, and how strange it was now to walk past those aged wooden doors in kid leather and mink, a modern woman with vivacious red lips and a cloud of sweet perfume enveloping her pristine skin.

People watched her as she walked down streets, a common reaction since Lena had become a woman, with her alabaster skin and raven hair a striking contrast, her green eyes bright and piercing. Life was new and exciting for her, full of endless opportunities that she’d been afraid to reach for back in Metropolis, trapped in the endless worry that she would do something that would have her thrown out in disgrace. But now, she walked tall and radiated happiness, every second of her day infused with the unbridled joy that Kara had brought to her life.

Sometimes she could scarcely believe it, and more than once, Lena caught herself lost in a reverie as she marvelled at Kara, watching the late autumn sunlight shine golden in her hair as they sat at a round table at a café down by the docks, enjoying the fresh salt hair as they escaped the muggy foulness of the city’s clogged streets. The way she spoke, a rapid flurry of English that was so different from the heavily accented, broken way she used to speak as a child. 

She watched Kara with an intensity that was unlike anything Lena had ever felt before, noting the way her eyebrows drew together and the bridge of her nose crinkled, the nervous ticks of fidgeting with her glasses and tugging at the bottom of her cardigans, the self-conscious fiddling of fingers and the way she gently bit her lip as she stared at Lena for just a second too long sometimes. And the way she danced.

They went out dancing nearly every night, drinking cocktails and champagne in elegant bars that Kara performed at when she wasn’t booked in at the  _ Grand Hotel, _ listening to blues music in dingy, smoke-filled dens, swing dancing in underground jazz bars. Lena had never been one for the nightlife and it felt like discovering a new world for her, and it was even more bizarre to see Kara, in her modest country dresses, in her element at the midst of it all.

They were going out again that night, or at least Kara was trying her best to convince Lena that they should, pulling silk dresses from the armoire and pressing them against herself as she ran her hands over the skirts. Riffling through an Italian novel, Lena lay stretched out on the wide bed, legs crossed at the ankles as she lounged on a stack of pillows.

“What about this one?”

“Mm, it’ll look great on you.”

“For  _ you _ ,” Kara said, heaving an exasperated sigh. “Come on, Lenochka. Pick a dress for tonight.”

Sighing, Lena lowered her book and scowled over the top of it, her heart lurching in her chest as she watched Kara spin around with the dress held against her, the skirt flaring out. A small smile twitched at the corners of her mouth.

“We went out  _ last _ night.”

“That’s the beauty of a new day; it comes with a new night as well,” Kara laughed, her eyes crinkling as she twirled with a dancer’s grace, “it’ll be fun!”

“That’s what you said last night, but my head disagreed this morning.”

Hanging the dress back up and sifting through the hangers for another one, Kara eagerly pulled out a royal blue one and arched an eyebrow with a goading smile.

“What about this one?”

“Blue  _ is  _ your colour,” Lena murmured, setting her book down and sitting up, legs crossed and chin propped up in her hand. “You should wear it.”

Rolling her eyes, Kara gave her a stern look, “and what will  _ you _ wear?”

Climbing to her feet, Lena picked up her book and rounded the end of the bed, gently swatting Kara’s arm with the thick volume as amusement flickered in her eyes.

_ “I’ll _ be wearing my nightgown and enjoying some coffee and prepping papers for my students tomorrow.”

“Oh, you worry too much,” Kara dismissively waved aside her words, “just think of the  _ dancing _ , Lenochka! Don’t you want to do the Charleston with me?”

With a derisive snort, Lena set her book down heavily on the chaise lounge pushed up against the panelled wall and folded her arms across her chest as she faced her friend.

“You  _ know _ I can’t do the Charleston, and I have no intentions of embarrassing myself in front of the entire underbelly of National City.  _ I. Don’t. Dance.” _

Clucking her tongue with dissatisfaction, Kara pouted and draped the dress over the back of Lena’s reading chair, before she glided towards Lena with her hands held out. Arms still stubbornly crossed over her chest, Lena narrowed her eyes in suspicion as Kara moved closer.

She let Kara take her hands and unfold her arms, rolling her eyes and dragging her feet, before she was dragged into the relaxed embrace of Kara’s arms, one hand clutched tightly in hers while Kara’s hand pressed against her back. 

“How about a waltz then? Surely your fancy schools taught you a proper waltz,” Kara lightly murmured.

“Oh, they did,” Lena quietly chuckled, “and even my two left feet can manage a passable one, but I don’t think that’s up to the standard of Noonan’s.”

Kara’s warm laugh fanning across her cheek made Lena’s stomach clench and her heart ache in what was becoming all too familiar since she’d moved to National City. Before that, the sensation was completely foreign, and it made Lena confused and exhilarated as she tried her best to untangle the meaning behind it.

Since that first night they’d reunited, they hadn’t kissed again. They hadn’t even mentioned it, yet it loomed over every glance, every touch, every nuanced exchange between them that always felt like there was more lurking beneath what they said or did. Yet, in those moments where Lena’s stomach clenched and her heart stuttered and palms went clammy, she had the overwhelming urge to kiss her again. And still, she didn’t.

And she didn’t mention it either. Instead, the kiss lingered at the back of her mind, an unforgettable guest in her head as she tried to tiptoe around it, trapped in the contradicting nature of two women with a connection that was more than Lena dared to label. She didn’t delude herself into thinking she was the first to feel this way, but it was taboo, untalked about, and she couldn’t even begin to imagine how to raise the issue. How would she put a name to what she felt for Kara when she hardly dared think of those feelings herself?

“That’s because you’re too good for that old dump. A broad like you waltzing in a place like that would make all us common folk think that we were dreaming.”

“Why do you like it there so much?”

“I know it’s dirty and cheap but they gave me my first gig - before I got this one at the hotel. Everyone was too drunk to care about  _ who _ was performing, but J’onn and his band were nice enough to play some jazz to accompany me and I remember it being the first night that I felt like I belonged here. In National City.”

“I understand,” Lena murmured.

She gently pulled back from Kara and let their hands linger on each other for a moment longer before she let go, retreating over to the armchair and picking up the blue dress. With a small smile curving her lips, Lena held it out to Kara.

“You should wear this tonight; I’ll wear the maroon one.”

Face lighting up, Kara beamed at her as she skipped towards her and took the dress, eyeing it with delight as she mused aloud over the length of it. As ever, the thought of making up for lost time with Kara was enough for Lena to agree to whatever she had in mind for the night, and the matter was settled without further discussion.

Lena wore her maroon dress, as promised, with a string of pearls and ruby earrings. She managed to convince Kara to let her line her eyes in dark kohl and paint her lips red, watching her transform as her blonde curls were tamed into sleek waves, looking far from the country girl who loved maths as she gave Lena an excited smile. 

They left under the watchful eyes of Lena’s butler, who closed the elevator gate behind them before they made their way down to the lobby. Crossing the marble floor arm in arm, they made a striking pair, and Lena straightened with an almost smug pride, as if she was someone to be envied as they spilt out onto the sidewalk, yellow light and darkness casting odd shadows on their faces.

A car was waiting and they slipped into the back and let it drive them through the bustling city, neon lights and clogged streets enticing Lena as her body hummed with nervous anticipation. All protests and prior headaches were forgotten about as they were deposited on the curb outside the red awning that shadowed the stairs disappearing below street level.

Kara tugged encouragingly on her arm and Lena let herself be whisked downstairs and into the dark interior. A doorman inclined his head as the sound of jazz hit them upon the door opening, and Lena squinted through the gloominess, a haze of grey smoke veiling the crowded bar. Women were dressed in elegant shift dresses from last season, laughing on the arms of men in shabby suits, and Lena’s shoes stuck to the warped wooden floorboards as they filed through the crowd.

She fetched them Sidecars from the familiar bartender, Mike, who flashed her a smile as he slung a rag over his shoulder. Two cocktail glasses were set down before her, amber in the dim lights with twists of orange floating in each one, and she left Mike to add it to her account, winding back through the room to find Kara standing near the stage, leaning in to converse with J’onn over the loud drumming as he held his saxophone in hand, the deep brass catching the dim lights.

Nudging her, Lena held a drink out to Kara and greeted J’onn over the music, before he gave them both a curt nod and warm smile, before straightening up and joining in on the number the band were playing. Kara swayed to the music as Lena sipped her drink, eyes glancing around the packed bar as she watched couples dance or smoke along the edges of the room.

“Go on, Lenochka, find yourself a handsome man to dance with,” Kara said, her warm breath tickling Lena’s ear and making her shiver with pleasure.

“I’m not interested in any men here,” Lena scoffed back over the music, rolling her eyes as she pressed her red lips together.

Kara pressed up against her and Lena stared resolutely ahead as she took another sip, trying to ignore the warmth that seeped into her and made her stomach clench. Draining the rest of her drink quickly, Lena rolled the glass between her fingers and gave Kara a thin smile.

“Another drink?”

Without waiting for a response, she made for the bar and rapped her knuckles on the scarred wood as she brooded in line. It didn’t take long for Mike to lean on the counter before her, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows as he brushed his hair back.

“What’ll it be this time, Miss Lena?”

Giving him a droll smile, she jerked her chin towards the row of bottles lined up on the shelves behind him. “Two Gin Rickey’s, please.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She watched him mix up the drinks and set them down before her with a flourish, giving her a small salute before he wandered off to serve more customers, and Lena carried them back over to Kara, taking a tepid sip from one of the tumblers. Kara was still nursing her Sidecar and tapping her foot in time to the beat, singing along to a popular number that Lena only knew half the words of. 

“You should dance,” Lena said loud enough to be heard over the music, nodding her head towards the space where bodies spun and writhed.

Wrinkling her nose slightly, Kara smiled as she shook her head, “this song is a couple's dance.”

“I’m sure you can find a willing partner,” Lena replied, trying to keep the bitterness out of her words as envy twisted her stomach.

No, envy wasn’t the right word for it. Lena could’ve had any man here begging for her hand, giving them sidelong glances as she watched them watch her and fail to pluck up the courage to ask. It was the same every time she went out drinking; she never said yes. 

She didn’t want to  _ be _ Kara, she wanted to dance  _ with _ her. It was jealousy. She was jealous of the way she wheeled around the room with strangers charmed by her wide-eyed innocence, drawn to the kind smile and pretty blue eyes. The way Kara laughed with them, a friend to all, as they twirled and stepped in tune. She was jealous of the flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes they brought out in Kara. Lena secretly wanted it to be  _ her _ doing all those things, and instead, she lurked in the shadows, watching everyone with her quiet intensity, sulking and taking drags of cigarettes as she lingered with the cowardly hopefuls on the edge of the room.

Kara dismissively waved a hand. “I’ll wait until Aleksy gets here.”

Nodding, Lena tried to relax, rolling her shoulders to force her muscles to unwind. She finished her Gin Rickey soon, the alcohol burning pleasantly on its way down her throat, and she rolled the glass between her palms, eyes flitting around as scraps of conversation washed over her. The whole time, she could feel Kara beside her as if there was a thread connecting them, a magnetic force that made her react to each minute change in Kara’s stance, in her movements.

Alex showed up with a few friends half an hour later, and Kara found herself a dance partner while Lena was left trailing after her sister. She’d been fully embraced by Kara’s friends and family, and spent many nights in bars or theatres and carnivals with them all, feeling the warmth of friendship that she’d missed from Andrea. But watching Kara dance that night was unbearable, and Lena was uncharacteristically quiet as she tried not to keep casting sidelong glances at Kara, who seemed to draw Lena’s attention no matter where she was in the room.

After an hour, Lena drained the drink she’d been nursing since Alex’s arrival and set it down on the bar, before gently tugging on the sleeve of Alex’s baggy suit jacket. Blowing a stream of white smoke out of the corner of her mouth, Alex raised her eyebrows in question. Wrinkling her nose, Lena gave her a wan smile and jerked her head towards the door.

“I’m going to go,” she shouted over the music. 

Nodding in understanding, Alex gave her arm a goodbye squeeze, and Lena moved through the crowded room, touching her friends’ shoulders and giving them nods and smiles as she conveyed her goodbyes, before she stepped outside.

The music was muffled behind the door as it swung closed, and the air held a slight chill, drying the sweat prickling her skin as she walked upstairs, clutching her fur wrap around herself. Laughter and bawdy singing filled the packed streets as Lena emerged from beneath the awning, shoulders slumped with weariness as she stood on the sidewalk, tasting brandy and gin sour in her mouth as she waited for a cab.

Music spilt out of bars and speakeasy’s, restaurants and gambling dens, not all of them legal, but all of them places Lena had frequented over the past few weeks, her life taking a drastic turn as she was swept up alongside Kara and her gigs. They were fun, Lena enjoyed the atmosphere and the music, and longed for the dancing, but she hated, more than anything, to see Kara dancing with other men. And now she was tired and upset and chafing at the thought of her friend, her love, downstairs dancing the Charleston beside some sweet-talking man that had made Kara laugh.

“Lenochka! You weren’t going to say goodbye, no?” Kara called from behind her.

Lena’s heart thudded with surprise as she whirled around, eyes wide and smeared red lips parting. She closed her mouth again and floundered for a moment, watching Kara walk towards her, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, yet bewildered and hurt as she cocked her head to the side.

“I’m … tired. You should go back inside; enjoy your night.”

Frown deepening, Kara shook her head and came to a stop before Lena, a questioning burning in the depths of her eyes as she reached out to touch her arm, fingers warm from the grasp of someone else’s hands, and Lena took a step backwards. Someone passed behind her and she almost stumbled into them, forced to step forward again, so close to Kara that she could smell the sweet perfume she’d spritzed her with earlier on in the night, as they’d gotten ready. 

“Something’s wrong,” Kara stated.

With a quiet, shuddering laugh, Lena looked everywhere but at her, fixing her dark hair and turning back to the street, a hand stretched out to flag down a cab. She wished her chauffeur was there to save her the wait so she could hastily leave, but instead, Kara waited with her, silent yet brimming with the urge to ask a dozen questions.

She didn’t have to wait long though, and Lena quickly slid into the back of the yellow car, reaching to close the door, before the handle was wrenched from her grasp as Kara ducked inside. Spluttering in protest, Lena gave her a grim look, but Kara was already slamming the door shut, practically sitting on Lena’s lap.

Forced to scoot over to put some space between them, her pulse jumping at the heat of Kara’s body, Lena sullenly leant against the opposite door as Kara cheerfully gave the driver Lena’s address. She spent the entire ride leaning forward, arm gripping the passenger seat as she talked to the driver, charming him with her easy laughs and friendly chitchat while Lena stared at the back of his headrest, arms folded over her chest as she silently brooded.

She handed him a wad of cash as he slowed before her apartment, already opening the door before it stopped, and was staggering onto the sidewalk by the time the cab jerked to a halt. Halfway up the steps to the lobby door, Lena heard the car door slam behind Kara, followed by her hurried footsteps as her heeled Mary Jane’s clicked on the sidewalk.

_ “Lena,”  _ Kara brusquely called out, her voice lower and harsher than usual, lacking the usual tenderness of the nickname and the warm fondness of their playful conversation. “Slow down.”

The hour was late enough that the doorman had gone home for the night, and Lena yanked the door open and stepped into the quiet lobby with a stiff back as she stormed across the marble floor, unable to keep Kara from following after her. Jamming her finger into the elevator button, she rummaged through her tiny purse for her apartment key, before a warm hand pulled her around.

_ “Hey _ ,  _ zhopa _ .”

Lena blinked in surprise at the cursing and a snort of laughter fell from her lips as her eyebrows rose.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong or be mad at me for no reason, huh?”

Kara’s chin stubbornly jutted forward as she gave Lena a disgruntled look. Ducking her head, Lena fished her keys out and pulled her arm from Kara’s grip, before turning back to the elevator as it dinged. Pulling open the gate, she stepped inside as Kara pushed in after her and slammed the gate shut with a rattle before Lena pushed the button for the top floor and it started its shuddering journey upstairs.

“I’m not  _ mad _ at you,” Lena scoffed after a moment of heavy silence. “I’m just tired.”

“You’re lying to me,  _ Lenochka,” _ Kara murmured, a mournful thickness to the words as she brushed the back of her hand against Lena’s. 

Her voice was so soft that it made Lena’s heart ache as she pulled her hand away from her touch. Gruffly clearing her throat, Lena stared straight ahead as the floors slipped by, while Kara quietly laughed, the sound strained and full of disbelief.

“What? Now I can’t touch you?”

With a sharp cry of hollow amusement, Lena shook her head, grinding her teeth together as her frustration and jealousy reached new peaks. Curling her hands into fists she swallowed the lump in her throat and felt the burning pressure behind her eyes as if she was about to cry. Her whole body felt tense and exhausted and she was mad at herself and for Kara for being so stupidly blind too, or at least for being careless with Lena’s feelings if she  _ did _ notice. 

And she was scared of what she  _ did _ feel, and how wrong it should be, and was even more scared at how it didn’t feel wrong at all. Not that single, sweet kiss that she cherished, or every touch and glance since. She didn’t know what to make of a chaste kiss of two old friends reuniting, easily able to be dismissed as the happiness of finding each other again. But she wanted more.

The elevator dinged and Lena tore the gate open and stalked into the foyer of her apartment, bristling and agitated as she tossed her purse and fur wrap onto the round table situated in the centre with a vase of fresh flowers. Rounding it, she disappeared into the sitting room ahead and scrubbed a hand over her tired face, kicking off her kitten heels and feeling a stone lodged in her throat.

“Did someone  _ do _ something?”

“No!” Lena exclaimed, whirling around to face Kara, her face darkened with anger and delicately flushed with embarrassment, “is it too difficult to imagine that I just didn’t want to watch you dance all night?”

Recoiling slightly, Kara’s eyebrows rose with surprise as she blinked, “well you could’ve danced too! You just always turn down their offers-”

“I don’t want to dance with any of those men! I don’t want to dance with them, I want to dance with  _ you.  _ In fact, I don’t want to dance at  _ all _ , but  _ I  _ want to be the one you’re dancing with and it hurts me to see you dance with them and not with me.”

Kara’s brow creased with confusion as she cocked her head to the side and gave Lena a searching look, “you’re … jealous?”

“Yes, I’m jealous!” Lena cried, “I’m jealous, okay? I’m jealous and I’m scared of how wrong this all is but how it doesn’t  _ feel _ wrong. I want to dance with you and I’m not ashamed of that.”

Wariness flickered in Kara’s eyes as she slowly moved towards Lena, “when you say dance … do you mean … what  _ do _ you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Lena whispered, “but what do  _ you _ mean? When you ask me to dance with you, what do you mean?”

Reaching out, Kara picked up her hand and ran her thumb across Lena’s knuckles before she gently pulled her towards her. Lena stumbled but went willingly, inches shorter than Kara as her stockinged feet pressed against the cold marble floor. Looking up into her blue eyes with mournful eyes, Lena waited with bated breath.

With a soft sigh, Kara gave her a small smile and cupped the side of Lena’s neck, her thumb pressing against the underside of her jaw, and she leant down slightly, looming over her as their noses stood an inch apart.

“I mean that … out of all my dance partners, you’re the one I want to dance with the most.”

“Okay, no, can we speak plainly?” Lena asked, jerking her face away from Kara’s and turning her head aside.

Her hands were still held in Kara’s grip and her face was flushed red with embarrassment as she fixed her gaze on the fire her housekeeper had lit before leaving for the day. 

_ “Dorogaya.” _

Lena slowly looked up at Kara as a jolt ran through her at the term of endearment, and with shy hesitation, and mournful yearning, she met Kara’s gaze. Her eyes crinkled at the corners as her lips curved up into a smile, and she gave Lena a bemused look of disbelief.

Cupping the other side of her neck in her hand, Kara hesitated for a heartbeat, one brief moment of pause as she gauged Lena’s reaction, before she bridged the rest of the gap between them. Noses gently bumped and lips parted, and Lena’s eyes flew wide open before her eyelashes fluttered and she shut her eyes, reaching up to encircle Kara’s wrists with her slender fingers, holding on tightly.

Kara kissed her gently yet urgently, cradling her face in her palms and putting all of her feelings into it as they swayed in the middle of the room, the silence broken by the merry crackling of the fire. And then Kara pulled back and rested her forehead against Lena’s, still cupping her jaw as Lena held onto her wrists, taking a moment for their breathing to still and haywire hearts to settle down.

“I thought it was clear.”

A low choked sound got caught in the back of Lena’s throat as she ducked her head and closed her eyes. Exhaling deeply, shoulders slumping as her heart thundered in her chest she let out a quiet, scoffing laugh, shaking her head.

“No, it wasn’t  _ clear. _ You- I  _ moved _ here and you haven’t mentioned that kiss since. Never even pretended like it happened.”

“You have  _ staff _ , Lena. We could- we could be in big trouble if …”

_ “I know.” _

“But that doesn’t change anything for me,” Kara said, her voice low and insistent.

Pulling one of her hands from the side of her neck, Lena pressed a soft kiss into the palm, leaving a faint smear of red, before she looked up at Kara.

“You don’t think it’s wrong?”

“Does it feel wrong?”

“No, not at all.”

“Then I don’t care what other people think.”

“Will you stay tonight? I’d like to talk more.”

Kara nodded and relief washed over Lena, closely followed by elation as she squeezed Kara’s hand and let go. Making her way through to her bedroom, Lena took off her jewellery and fetched a nightgown for herself and Kara, before dressing for bed and throwing a robe on top. She set her hair into rollers and pins and listened to the distant sounds of Kara banging around in the kitchen, before her friend returned five minutes later with two cups of tea precariously balanced on saucers as she tried not to spill any.

“Do you have any jam? I couldn’t find it.”

Wrinkling her nose, Lena shook her head and disappeared through the door to fetch some for Kara, returning with a jar of strawberry and a teaspoon. She paused in the doorway, watching Kara carefully hang up her dress and Lena’s in the armoire, her fingertips trailing over the cloth, finer than anything she owned herself.

Lena’s expression softened as she watched her graceful moves, her slender piano-player hands and the way she cherished her belongings, knowing how it felt to not have much. To have everything ripped away so quickly that it left one desperate to cling to what was left. 

Shutting the door to the ornately wrought cupboard, Kara turned and started slightly at the sight of Lena, who waved the jar of jam and stepped further into the room, holding it and the spoon out to her.

“Thank you,  _ Lenochka.” _

_ “Spasibo.” _

The blankets had already been turned down by her housekeeper, and Lena arranged her pillows accordingly as she watched Kara stir a teaspoon of jam into one of the cups on the end table. Slipping beneath the blankets, Lena propped her head up in her hand as she watched Kara’s movements, before she slipped into bed beside her and settled down, passing a cup of tea across.

“Is that  _ actually _ nice?” Lena wondered aloud as Kara took a sip.

Eagerly nodding her head, Kara beamed at her, “it is! Do you want to try it?”

Despite her reservations, Lena couldn’t say no to Kara’s eager hopefulness and set her saucer down in her lap to carefully take the cup offered to her. Taking a tentative sip, Lena swallowed the sickly sweet mouthful and made a pleasantly surprised sound as she gave it back, trying to keep her face neutral.

“Oh … it’s quite good.”

Beaming, Kara nodded in agreement and took another sip as Lena picked hers back up.

“Alex thinks it’s disgusting but it reminds me of home. There’s a very good Russian restaurant that serves all of my favourite dishes; I’ll take you there soon. The borscht is the best I’ve had in years. I like to go there after temple.”

“I’d like that,” Lena murmured, reaching over to rest her hand on the blankets covering Kara’s thigh, gently patting it.

They were quiet for a moment, drinking their tea and thinking, before Kara drained the last mouthful and let the sluggish dregs of jam pool in the bottom as she set her cup down.

“Do you think about it much? Ireland? Do you remember home?”

“I- not a lot,” Lena replied, her words halting and rough with pain, “I remember her laugh. I don’t know what she looked like anymore, but she had red hair. I remember the cold and hunger, and the sound of a song she always used to sing - I don’t know the words.”

“What did it sound like?”

Feeling self-conscious, Lena laughed and shrugged, sinking down against her pillows as she stretched her legs out. In the wan light of the lamp beside her, the world had shrunk to just the two of them in the wide bed, and she let her head loll to the side as her tea warmed her hands, giving Kara a crooked smile.

Humming off-key, Lena closed her eyes, wincing at the discordant sound of the vague song she could remember in the depths of her mind. She broke off into a bashful laugh, wrinkling her nose, before she fell back into the quiet humming, trying to follow the familiar ghost of the tune.

She finally fell quiet and cracked her eyelids open, giving Kara a sleepy smile as she sighed heavily. Draining the rest of her tea, Lena set it on the end table and rolled over to face Kara, nearly nose to nose as they lay stretched out on their sides. Trailing her fingers over Kara’s arm, Lena gave her a questioning look.

“What was your mother like?”

“Not the kindest woman, but she loved me. She taught me to embroider and bought me pretty dresses. She would sit with me for our prayers every day and sit in the kitchen while our cook taught me how to make  _ challah. _ She was … respectable. Harsh when she needed to be, but fair. I think she would’ve liked you. So would Eliza.”

“You think so?”

“I do.”

Lena’s eyelids drifted closed as she smiled softly to herself, warmed by the thoughts of Kara’s mother’s liking her. She’d never been liked by many people before, not until she’d moved to National City.

“And I like you too,” Kara whispered, “you’re the person I want to dance with, whether it’s right or wrong.”

“Do you want to kiss me again?”

“Very much so.”

There was a smile in Lena’s voice as she opened her eyes and looked at Kara and replied. “I’d like that.”

They talked long into the night, apprehensive and curious, wondering about their feelings aloud, trying to convince each other that it couldn’t be wrong if it felt so nice, so real and warm, unlike anything else. Quietly confessing everything to each other, every thought and urge, every stamped down desire and flattering thoughts, every touch and glance, the hours slipped by, the night dark and unobtrusive outside the confines of Lena’s penthouse.

Eventually, Kara drifted off, her fingers twined with Lena’s as they lay facing each other, but Lena stayed awake a while yet, studying the curves of Kara’s face in the grey shadows. She fell asleep with a smile on her face, content and loved and worn out from a long night.

She woke in the morning to find the bed empty, blankets rumpled and cold, and rubbed at her tired eyes as she yawned and stretched, sitting up and blearily blinking. The sound of chatter in the kitchen drew her from her bed, and she padded barefoot through her sprawling apartment to find Kara nursing a cup of coffee as she leant against the counters, chatting away with Lena’s housekeeper.

_ “Lenochka!  _ Morning.”

Tying the belt on her robe, Lena frowned and suppressed another yawn as she wandered into the kitchen. “Good morning, Kara. Alanna.”

“Good morning, Miss Lena. How would you like your eggs?” the young woman asked.

“Sunnyside up, please.”

“Coffee?” Kara asked, smiling widely as she beat a frantic Alanna to the percolator and filled a mug for Lena, pushing it into her hand.

Lena quietly thanked her and took a sip, savouring the bitterness of the rich coffee as she glanced sideways at Kara.

“Will you be taking breakfast in the dining room, ma’am?” Alanna asked.

Head jerking up to meet her gaze, Lena gave her a tired smile, “please. Thank you, Alanna.”

Reaching out to tug on the nightdress Kara was wearing, Lena jerked her head out of the spacious kitchen, leaving Alanna to finish up breakfast for her. Retreating to the dining room, Lena took her usual seat at the head of the long table and set her cup of coffee down before her.

It wasn’t long before breakfast for two was spread out before her on the table. A stack of toast, pancakes, eggs and crispy bacon, oatmeal with chopped almonds and neatly sliced cantaloupe and halved grapefruit. It was too much for Lena, yet Alanna always insisted on a full spread. Serving eggs and bacon and pouring green tea from the fine bone teapot, Lena watched Kara eye the spread of food, grabbing a bit of everything except the bacon.

A stack of newspapers had been brought in too in a variety of languages, and Lena steadily made her way through the front of them. A local National City issue in English, another popular global American on. French. Italian. Russian. Spanish. German.

It was the last one that gave her pause. A copy of a German newspaper with a title that caught her attention and made her suck in a sharp breath as she let her fork clatter against the edge of her plate as she dropped it.

“Dear God,” Lena muttered, shaking out the newspaper as she straightened on her chair, eyes flitting back and forth as her lips parted.

“What is it?” Kara asked, buttering a piece of toast.

When Lena didn’t reply, Kara paused, looking up with the butter knife hovering midair, her piece of toast held in her other hand. Taking in the ashen pallor of Lena’s skin, she slowly set her knife back down, a flicker of unease tying her stomach into knots.

_ “Lenochka?” _

At the gentle sound of the nickname, Lena shook herself out of her absorption in the story and looked up at Kara with wide, fearful eyes. She licked her lips and swallowed thickly, before lowering the newspaper and folding it in half. Setting it gently down on the table, hiding the headline, she looked at Kara with worry.

“It’s- there’s been a- a pogrom. In Germany.”

_ “What?  _ What does it say?”

Kara reached out for the newspaper, and Lena gently rested her hand on top of it, a sympathetic look in her eyes as Kara met her stare with a silent question. Drawing in a shallow breath, Lena exhaled softly, a grim flatness to her mouth as she deliberated for a moment.

“It’s … the  _ Sturmabteilung _ has retaliated. Against the Jews. They destroyed their shops, synagogues, homes, schools. Everything. Because of Ernst vom Rath. They’re calling it  _ Kristallnacht _ _ . _ ”

Making a choked sound of surprise, Kara reached for the newspaper, and Lena let her take it this time, removing her hand as Kara pulled it from beneath it, and she watched with anxious pity as Kara’s face paled. Blanching as she quickly finished the piece, Kara let the newspaper slide from her grasp, one corner sticking to her buttered toast, as she looked at Lena with wide eyes, full of bewilderment.

“The Night of Broken Glass,” Kara murmured in a daze. “This is bad. This is  _ very _ bad. I knew things were tense but … this is an act of war.”

With pity swimming in her eyes, Lena reached out and moved the newspaper out of Kara’s toast, before reaching out to grasp her hand and give it a reassuring squeeze.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”


	10. Chapter 10

Tensions grew in early 1939, and even in National City things were uneasy. News reported Germany’s creeping advances through Europe, and yet the States were still clinging to the tail-end of the Great Depression. Her brother’s investments made the bank boom, loans and repossessions keeping Lena comfortable in her penthouse suite, untouched by the slums of the city, and yet it ate away at her to see the gaunt faces of children and threadbare clothes. The guilt clawed at her as she walked around in furs and silks, kid leather and French perfume, amidst the wealthy patrons of the West Village. 

She gave what she could, but there were too many people to help, and she knew a war would only make it worse. Every day, she hoped it wouldn’t come to war. Newspapers in every language were shipped to her from every corner of Europe and some parts of Asia, and she pored over them, picking apart sentences in a dozen different languages as she pieced together the story of skirmishes and new occupations of land. It turned her stomach and yet she couldn’t stop reading them. 

Kara was still in school, puzzling over equations and spending long hours in the library on campus, yet Lena could see the grief that bowed her shoulders as whispers of the horrors against Jews spread as far as the West Coast. Of course, neither of them knew how heinous they would become at the time.

Lena spent most of her days smoking with Alex in the confines of the garage she worked in, perching on a paperwork laden desk and charming the men who came in with engine problems as Alex lay beneath them, smeared with oil as she worked wrenches with deft fingers. She was one of the only friends Lena had in National City, courtesy of Kara, and she knew Alex shared her concerns.

For years, America had been restricting the number of Jewish immigrants as anti-semitic sentiments ran rife through the citizens, and it was with a dry mouth and dread coiling in her stomach that Lena read foreign newspapers and listened to local broadcasts echoing the same thoughts of a decade before. Even as early as January 1939, polls were printed by the American press, gauging the public’s opinion on admitting refugees. The answer was an overwhelming  _ no _ , and Lena worried for Kara. 

Kara who let everything roll off her back like water, who religiously attended a local synagogue for prayer, who spoke in rapid-fire Russian as they walked through the streets, who was quick to laugh and shake off her concerns. She was as different from Lena as could be, practical and warm, and perhaps reckless in her love. Kara all but moved into Lena’s apartment, pulling her back to bed when Lena rose with the sun.

Eve would make them coffee and turn a blind eye to the clothes Kara wore that didn’t belong to her. They would spend hours in bed, steaming mugs in hand and frizzy-haired with smudged eyes from late nights. And Lena knew her. Her every expression, the shift in her tone, the look in her eyes, and she would feel the unbridled tension beneath Kara’s warm skin in quiet moments as they dwelled in the soft early light of the day, waiting to see what bad news was brought upon them next.

Czechoslovakia was occupied and annexed by Germany, with no attempts to resist as Hitler started the slow spread of his regime by the end of March. They were heading into a hot summer by the time the Spanish Civil war came to an end at the start of April, and Lena read crumpled newspapers as a staticky radio transmitter played in the cavernous garage Alex worked out of. Smoking cigarettes and drinking warm ice tea as she lingered in the still air and occasionally passed Alex a tool out of the battered red box, Lena listened to the updates the nervous unease, feeling helpless and restless.

“I just wish we could  _ do _ something. America is barely even acknowledging what’s going on,” Lena grumbled one day, eating her way through a half-melted packet of  _ Sugar Babies _ left out on the trash-filled desk.  _ “Listen!  _ The  _ Pact of Steel. _ That’s what they’re calling it. An alliance between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and Roosevelt wants to remain neutral. War is almost certain now, and he can’t sit on his hands and go unnoticed while he gives England money. I’m telling you. And we’re supposed to watch it all happen.”

Making a non-commital sound as she struck a match, the sulfurous smell filling the air for a moment as she lit the cigarette clamped between her lips, Alex ran an oil-stained hand across her sweaty forehead. Fixing Lena with a scrutinising stare, she took a drag and blew smoke out of the side of her mouth as she handed it over. Her overalls were shed down to her waist in the heat of the garage and she wiped a hand on the grimy white t-shirt she wore underneath before replying.

Lena took the offered cigarette and took a dainty puff, leaving a rim of red around the filter as she sat primly beside her stack of foreign articles, legs crossed and skirt splayed out across her lap.

“I believe you, doll, but even if it came to war, there wouldn’t be much for us to do,” Alex drawled, rolling her eyes as she took the cigarette back. “It’s not a place for women in their eyes.”

“You’d go if you could?”

With the cigarette burning cherry red, Alex pointed it at her and gave her a fierce look as she smiled sharply, ash flaking to the concrete ground. “You know what I’d do? I’d pilot a Marauder, I’d fly over there, and I’d bomb the bastards to hell.”

“A pilot? You couldn’t pay me enough to fly one of those death traps.”

“No, I dare say we wouldn’t catch the likes of you doing work like that,” Alex chuckled.

“What’s  _ that _ supposed to mean?” Lena scoffed with laughter, giving her a stern look.

Gesturing with a hand, Alex shrugged and passed the cigarette back, before picking up a bottle of cola and taking a sip. “Well, look at you. I couldn’t see you dropping bombs, drinking motor oil and covered head to toe in grease. You’d be one of the girls doing the codebreaking or working the call lines. Pretty and safe.”

Bristling slightly, Lena gave her a haughty look as she scoffed again, “you think I couldn’t get my hands dirty?”

She blew a stream of smoke out of the corner of her mouth with a sharp smile, stubbing out the filter in an overflowing ashtray, before waving away the thin haze that shrouded them.

“No, ma’am. Why? What could you see yourself doing?”

“I don’t know ... perhaps I'll be a spy.”

“A  _ spy? You?” _

“Darling, I’d be the prettiest little spy you ever did see.  _ Du wirst sehen.” _

“You might speak all those fancy languages and be smarter than is good for you, but you wouldn’t last a day. I’d bet good money on that.”

Eyes creasing as she joined in with Alex’s laughter, Lena brushed a few flyaway hairs back into the neat waves and pulled her red lipstick out of her purse. Snapping open the compact, she looked at her reflection, her sharp green eyes, cunning and intelligent, and reapplied a layer of crimson, before blotting her lips on an old napkin from lunch. Shutting the compact, she gave Alex a wicked smile as the sound of car wheels crunched gravel.

Reaching forward to push the end of her nose, Lena gave her a hard look. “Well, I wouldn’t bet too much, doll. Wouldn’t want you to lose all that hard-earned money.”

At the sound of a car door slamming, Lena perked up slightly and slid off the desk as Kara stepped into the dim garage. There was only one other mechanic in that day, taking an early lunch break, and so Lena eagerly threw her arms around Kara and kissed her quickly.

“Hey, dollface,” Kara murmured, a smile in her voice as she kissed the tip of Lena’s nose, slinging an arm around her shoulder as they walked over towards Alex, who was wiping smears of chocolate off her palm as she finished off the rest of the candies.

Eyeing the navy high-waisted woollen slacks and the light cornflower blue of Kara’s short-sleeved shirt, Lena smiled, admiring the hollow of her throat through the v-neck of the shirt, the wiry muscles of Kara’s arms, in contrast to the bookish meekness of her girlfriend. 

“Do you know about _madame's_ plans?” Alex asked, affecting a lofty tone as she smiled. 

“Plans? What plans might those be?”

“For the war,” Alex said lighting another cigarette.

Scoffing as her body tensed slightly, Kara let out a breezy laugh and brushed at her blonde hair, neatly waving past her shoulders. “There  _ isn’t _ a war.”

“Not yet. Your girl seems mighty sure of it though. She’s going to be a spy, ain’t that right, Lena?”

With a withering stare and a heavy sigh, Lena gave Kara a wry smile, “I think it’d be … good.”

“A  _ spy? _ Hm, well, you’d sure be good at charming information out of Nazi's.”

_ “What?” _

_ “Ha! _ I told you I’d be good at it!”

“I wouldn’t mind the idea of it myself,” Kara mused, a troubled look clouding her face, “if it  _ did _ come to war, I mean.”

Pulling back from her to get a good look at her face, Lena’s expression softened with amusement as she arched an eyebrow. “Oh, now  _ that _ I couldn’t see. You’re a terrible liar, darling.”

“I’m not  _ that _ bad.”

“Yes, you are,” Alex chimed in. “But don’t worry, you’re a genius with numbers. I’m sure they’d snap you up in a second for the war effort.”

“Well that’s just- that’s mean, Aleksey. You think I wouldn’t be useful as something else? Bandaging wounded soldiers? Perhaps they’ll let women on the lines this time, no?”

“Don’t go filling your head with ideas,” Alex warned her in a low voice, “even if there was the slightest chance they’d let women do the fighting, there’s no sense in you getting yourself blown to bits.”

Bristling, Kara jut her chin forward as her pale eyebrows furrowed over stormy blue eyes. “It would be my  _ right _ . It’s  _ my _ people the Germans want to eradicate.”

“I know that. All the more reason to keep you safe.”

“Safety is an illusion, even in the great United States. I’ve seen the polls. Americans would sooner let Jews die to the Nazi invasion than let them into the country.”

* * *

Later that night, laying side by side in bed, trailing her fingertips over the golden skin of Kara’s back as they nursed cocktails in bed, hair mussed and a warm breeze stirring the gauzy curtains, Lena pressed a kiss to her shoulder and stared at her face. Kara’s eyes were closed, her shoulders rising and falling with each breath through parted lips, and she propped herself up onto her elbow, taking a sip of her sidecar.

“Did you mean it?” Lena whispered in the lamplight, “what you said earlier, about wanting to fight. Did you mean it?”

Eyes slowing opening, Kara rolled over onto her back, shifting up to lean against the pillows as she reached for the sweating glass on the nightstand. Rolling it between her palms, she pursed her lips for a moment before replying.

“Lenochka, my little light, would you begrudge me the chance to save my people? I’ve lived in America for a long time now, but … that is my past, my history. Russia has no love of Jewish people either, it’s why my parents wanted us to come here, and I don’t think Stalin will help. Not when there’s so much to gain for him. But I would have to try. Do you not think I should help, if given the chance?”

“If given the chance … I would tell you to follow your heart,” Lena quietly replied, a faint smile on her lips as she looked at Kara with tender love. “You are … trusting and kind; it wouldn’t lead you astray. I’d worry though. And I’d miss you. But I’d never tell you  _ not _ to do what is right.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“I do.”

Cocking her head to the side as she gave her a mystified look, eyes shining with adoration, Kara reached out and cupped Lena’s chin in her cold hand. “Would you help too?”

“In a heartbeat.”

Leaning forward, Lena touched her forehead to Kara’s as her eyes slid closed. 

“I would fight every day for a world where you’re safe and free. But, I would be lying if I said I’m not scared.”

“It would be foolish not to be. I feel as if we’re waiting on the brink, while Europe is already tipping over the edge.”

“I don’t wish for war,” Lena murmured, a pensive look on her face as she swirled melting ice cubes around in her glass, the gentle clinking almost soothing, “but I wish that we could stop it now. That America would not shy from aiding those in need before it reaches every corner of the world.”

With a wary look on her face, Kara pressed her lips into a flat line and looked at her for a long moment, before taking a sip and setting her glass back down.

“What would your mother say, if you signed up to help the war effort - should it come.”

Deliberating, Lena smiled faintly, draining the rest of her glass and setting it down, before she rolled back towards Kara. Reaching out to brush unkempt curls out of her face, Lena picked up her hand and kissed it delicately.

“I think she would be pleased. She’d tell me to go and do something bold and daring before settling down to marry some high society businessman and spend my days cooped up with a dozen children. It’s why she sent me packing the moment I broached the idea of moving here. Yes, I think she’d be pleased. Possibly even … proud.”

“Married with children? Is that what you see in your future?”

With a quiet chuckle, Lena closed her eyes, a smile dimpling her cheeks as her eyelashes fluttered. Opening the again, she looked at Kara and slowly shook her head, thumbing her knuckles as she still kept hold of her hand, and gave her a look of deep yearning and contentment.

“All I see is you.”

Joy sparked in Kara’s eyes, even as she struggled not to show how much Lena’s words affected her, and it sent a surge of warmth through Lena’s chest as she nestled down beside her, burrowing her face into the crook of Kara’s neck. With a soft sigh, Kara’s lips brushed Lena’s forehead as she pulled the blankets up over them, before switching off the lamp and plunging them into the dark.

“I can’t believe I found you,” Kara whispered, a note of longing in her voice.

“I can’t believe it either,” Lena said, “and if it comes to war -  _ if - _ and we lose each other again … I’ll find you again. I promise you that. If we become … spies, or- or truck drivers. Nurses, codebreakers. In America, England, Russia. I don’t care. I just- I’d find you again.”

“I’d find you too.”

Swallowing thickly as she closed her eyes, the darkness pressing in around her and giving her the courage to lay her soul bare, Lena exhaled softly against the side of Kara’s neck, feeling goosebumps ripple across her skin in response.

“I just … I love you.”

Her voice shook as she spoke, her eyes prickling with tears as she marvelled at the strange honesty of the words. It was accompanied by an unfamiliar feeling in her chest, one she hadn’t ever felt before, so unfamiliar that she hadn’t even realised there was a name for it. Of course, she cared about her family, was appreciative and grateful, but even Lena knew that there was a lack of love there, a void that had never been filled, even as everything she’d ever wanted had been given to her on a whim. And now she knew what it was, how it felt.

“I think … you’re the only person I’ve ever loved. I’ve never felt this way before.”

Kara was quiet for a moment, and Lena stilled as she slowly breathed, trying to quieten the hammering in her chest as a prickle of fear ran up her spine. And then Kara’s hand cupped her cheek and the pad of her thumb smoothed over it, and even though it was dark and Lena couldn’t see her, she could hear the smile in her voice when she replied.

“I love you too, Lenochka.”

* * *

“What’re you reading?” Kara asked, smiling at Lena’s troubled expression as she bit into the chocolate-covered ice cream from the  _ Good Humors _ truck idling further up the beach, near the paved boardwalk.

It was the start if September, sweltering hot in the stifling, dusty air of National City as autumn had no inclination of arriving, and Lena had been lured to the beach with the rest of Kara’s friends. Alex was there, of course, along with a mousy school friend of Kara’s who was in a few of the same math classes, named Winn. Mike, the barman and his new girlfriend, Imra, a pretty English physicist, as well as a few other strays that Kara had picked up at  _ Noonan’s _ .

Dressed in a bold red bathing suit that matched her lipstick, Lena lay on a sun lounge in the shade of a wide umbrella, reading a folded copy of the day’s newspaper as the business of the beach faded around her. Setting the paper down in her lap, Lena pushed her cat-eyed sunglasses down her nose, a wide-brimmed hat shading her face as she smiled at Kara.

“The news.”

“I don’t know how you can bear it,” Kara murmured around a mouthful of chocolate as a pucker appeared between her eyebrows. “It’s all so … sad. It makes me angry. I don’t like feeling that way.”

“Sometimes the need to be informed is more important,” Lena said with a grim flatness to her mouth. “And with this whole nonaggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union …”

Kara let out a hiss of contempt, mouth twisting with displeasure as ice cream dripped down the wooden stick the tightly clenched in her hand. “Stalin is a fool if he thinks that Hitler will honour it.”

Sighing heavily, Lena shoved the newspaper beneath her seat, stretching her legs out before her as sand obscured the black ink that brought dire news with it. “I don’t think he believes it himself. It’s a good strategy for the Soviet Union … let Hitler do what he pleases and raise your own armies and defences while he’s distracted and giving you free land for keeping out of his business. Stalin’s too clever. After Germany broke its deal with Britain and France in March … he knows it’s a matter of time before Hitler comes for him too.”

_ “Hey!” _ Alex called out as she ploughed up the soft sandy beach, dripping water everywhere as she slicked back her short hair, “no war talk, you two. We’re here to have  _ fun. _ What’s it gonna take to get you in the water?”

“You’ll have to strongarm me, sweetheart,” Lena flippantly replied, pushing her sunglasses back up over her eyes as she made herself comfortable.

“Boys?”

“Oh, no,” Lena uneasily laughed, holding her hands up in defence, “no, no. Lay a finger on me Matthews, and your sweetheart will see you cry.”

Perching on the end of Lena’s lounge, Alex slung a towel around her neck and gripped both ends, before shaking her hair like a wet dog, splattering Lena with water. Grumbling, Lena gave her a rude gesture as Alex laughed.

“Careful with this one, fellas. She’s rich enough to hire a hit on your entire family if you get on her bad side. Ain’t that right, dollface?”

_ “Oh, _ will you  _ get off! _ Your sister is insufferable.”

She directed the last part of her sentence to Kara, who was sitting cross-legged in the sand beside her, happily finishing off the rest of her ice cream. Freckles were sprinkled across the bridge of her nose as she smiled, hair golden and coming loose from its salt-crusted waves and Kara leant her head against Lena’s arm as she quietly laughed.

“You’re telling me?  _ I _ had to grow up with her. You have to  _ learn _ to love her; might take a few years.”

“Comrade,  _ I _ had to grow up with you,” Alex snorted as she accepted a cigarette from Imra.

“I’m glad I was an only child,” Winn happily sighed, flipping through a comic as he lay stretched out on a beach towel.

“Well, fortunately for Lena, I told J’onn we’d meet him at the shack in twenty,” Kara said, pulling her leather wristwatch out of her purse as she checked the time.

Changing in the striped tents at the top of the soft dunes, situated amidst the waving sea oats and beachgrass, Lena donned an emerald green dress covered in flowers with a bow collar. With a fresh coat of red lipstick and her wide-brimmed beach hat, she looked proper, yet artfully dishevelled, a tiredness to her youthful face as she slung her beach bag over a shoulder and stepped outside.

The early evening was warm, the sun just starting to sink, the shadows stretching as a dusky blue hue descended over the world, and the beach was very much still alive. Hotdog vendors and  _ Good Humour _ vans still selling ice creams lined the paths, while a boardwalk of diners, seafood shacks, deli’s and tackle and souvenir stores lined the way all the way to the docks. Even in early September, it was packed, jukebox music mixing with old vinyls and staticky radio as they walked along, shouts and laughter drifting back and forth.

Kara carried her shoes in hand, arm looped casually through the crook of Lena’s elbow as they walked along together, weaving slightly on the path as they ambled along at the back of their group. Imra was on Mike’s back, head thrown back in laughter, and Alex was talking quietly with Winn as she chain-smoked, her dark hair drying in a wavy mess. It was peaceful, yet heavy with a foreboding sense of finality as if this was the last moment of peace that would be afforded them. Lena could feel the charge in the air, ominous and slowly encroaching.

Packing into an outdoor deck, looking over the water as it sparkled with the orange glow of the setting sun, they ordered beers and cocktails, getting a headstart as they waited for J’onn to show up. He was there on time, slapping a friend on his shoulder as they started for the table. The stranger’s name was James, a news photographer, brawny and easy to laugh as he slid right into place amidst the group. 

They made their way through piles of crab and fresh mussels, grilled fish that Kara gratefully devoured, crispy gem potatoes and warm dinner rolls and butter. A haze of smoke enveloped them as they all shared cigarettes, filling the ashtray with burned-out filters, the table sticky with spilt beer and brown glass bottles, elbowing each other for more room. It was inelegant and familiar, and Lena smiled to herself as she sat back, full to the point of bursting, her butter-slick fingers gripping the neck of a bottle of beer as the warm air caressed her sweaty skin.

And it a heartbeat, that fragile peacefulness was destroyed with a simple news broadcast coming out of the staticky speaker of a radio near the bar. It was the shouts first, that cut through the laughter and ease of their evening, the clamouring for quietness.

_ “Hey! Quiet! Everyone shut it! Turn it up, turn it up!” _

The sound in the restaurant dimmed, a ripple of confused whispers running through the diners. Raising her bottle to her lips, Alex’s eyebrows rose. “Wonder what that’s all about.”

Brow furrowing as she sipped her own beer, the taste sour and unpalatable, yet giving her something to do as she waited for news to reach them outside, Lena reached out for Kara’s hand under the table and held onto it with the careful casualness of someone who did it often. Her skin was warm and slightly greasy and the briny smell of the sea clung to Kara from her forays into the sea. Lena wanted to kiss the side of her neck and taste the salt as she lapsed into distracting thoughts before a commotion further inside tore her out of it.

_ “It’s the Nazi’s!”  _

_ “The Germans have invaded Poland!” _

_ “Quiet! There’s more!” _

The rest was drowned out as the volume in the restaurant rose to an uneasy babble, voice clamouring over each other as a ripple of unease fanned out. Swallowing thickly, Lena’s eyes scanned those of her friends and new acquaintances sitting around the table, a sick feeling in her stomach as they all sat in a bubble of silence amidst the shouts surrounding them, staring at each other with dread. 

Until her eyes locked with Kara’s and she felt a spasm in her chest. Tightening her grip on her hand, Lena gave her a slight nod, unable to voice her thoughts. Kara gripped her hand tightly in return, her thumb brushing Lena’s fingers, and they stayed like that until J’onn broke them all out of their sombre reverie. Forking out a handful of bills, Lena set it all down on the table, and before anyone else could protest, she pulled Kara from her seat and pushed through the tense crowd.

A few days later, news came that Britain and France had formally declared war on Germany. Roosevelt publicly declared the United States as neutral. For how long that would hold, Lena didn’t know, but she knew that Kara wasn’t likely to sit quietly in National City. And Lena would follow her anywhere, as far as she could.


End file.
